Lorsque rien n’est plus donné, que l’on ne tient d’aucun dieu l’inspiration en laquelle on ne croit plus, reste à parier sur les ressources propres du matériau, l’alliance de l’intelligence et de la main qui, depuis que l’homme est homme, précisément, nourrissent la spontanéité créatrice et président à l’invention des formes. Un sursaut a saisi le siècle passé, l’a dressé contre des traditions sédimentées qui, sous le masque de la culture, semblaient convertir dans l’instant toute fraîcheur en un psittacisme fatal; ces convulsions sont notre histoire. Depuis ce temps, plus aiguë, plus lancinante, la question se pose, en art, du commencement.
Si rien ne vient de l’extérieur donner l’élan premier, un thème, un concept, une vision même, l’esprit est ramené dans ses prétentions à ses fonctions apparemment les plus humbles, les moins séparées, d’accompagner à sa façon les mouvements du corps, se faisant le relais non moins ému d’une intelligence pratique, fusionnant dans le geste. L’énergie du geste, son économie, sont le tombeau des vieux dualismes. Et si l’on a pu céder à l’idée qu’en lui, le corps prenait sa revanche, ce n’était encore qu’en leur concédant.
Deux secondes à peine ont suffi à Joëlle Léandre, Daunik Lazro, Carlos Zingaro et Paul Lovens pour parapher d’une main collective ce silence d’avant la musique, dont la déchirure, si elle ne procède pas de lui, la soumet aux emprunts arbitraires qu’on a dits, qui l’inféodent aux langages communs, l’adressant ainsi à une oreille commune. Deux secondes pendant lesquelles s’organise, plus vite que la parole, une forme complexe, irréductible à la somme des subjectivités en cause, un idéogramme où la superposition de mouvements contraires, questions et réponses simultanées, ponctuations, suspensions, tensions et équilibres disposent un monde qu’une heure, c’est à dire, à cette échelle, une éternité ou presque, n’épuisera pas en son détail. Ce geste, la forme et son élan coextensivement livrés, le style — la pointe du sujet — et le son — l’ombre portée, l’ombre matérielle dans laquelle celui-ci s’enfonce fatalement en se découvrant —, leur contact natif, ce geste donc, apparaît comme le commencement de la liberté. Plutôt, il est la liberté qui commence. Ou bien encore, et ensemble, le commencement même.
Comment poursuivre n’est plus alors que la question de vivre. L’humour, la révolte, la marche et son infini trébuchement, chacun a sa recette, sa stratégie, sa posture, sa position. Qu’il donne aux autres, qu’il reçoit des autres, qui s’échange jusqu’à l’effacement complet de la possession — potlatch, en effet, mais au second degré, puisque aucun prestige personnel n’en est plus l’enjeu, mais le sujet lui-même. Vivre, jouer, ce n’est pas retomber, au bout du mouvement, dans l’histoire — les histoires… —, mais autoriser la poursuite de ce qui, dans son initiative, demande à frayer son chemin d’inconnu, à dégager les perspectives devant ce qui se trace. Etre attentif. Il n’y a maintenant de saisie que sur le fond de ce désaisissement, de « parole » prise qu’en l’abandonnant au partage, à son destin sonnant, errant dans la matière, au travail en elle jusqu’à métamorphose complète. Travail du vivant sur la vie, jeu dans le jeu — silence —, la « forme », fantasme d’emprise toujours reconduit, la forme y passe ; passe dans le passage. Improviser, ce peut être cela : ouvrir le chemin aux métamorphoses du geste. A ses conséquences en cascade. In-finir son commencement. La fin ne finit rien : le geste se retire, s’efface devant le dessin qui reste en la mémoire, persistance silencieuse. Confondue dans la durée biologique, la musique a vécu notre vie, transitivement. Nous sommes nous-mêmes passés dans la musique. En musique. Le miracle, aujourd’hui, c’est qu’il puisse y avoir « repasse », et qu’au passage, le geste demeure et son transitif infini, boucle en laquelle nous croyons voir se dessiner l’image tremblante de notre éternité dans le temps. En ce sens, l’improvisation captée, enregistrée, reproduite, n’est pas abolie, mais, sous réserve que ses acteurs aient soutenu sa puissance gestuelle, accélérée en son mouvement premier, portée au comble de ce qui, en lui, nous comble.

P.-L. Renou

Most Americans discover European improvised music using a map dominated by Amsterdam, Berlin, and London, which dwarfs and shoves the rest of the continent to the margins. At some point, however, even they realize the land lies differently. Yet, extensive exploration is required to correct the proportions, label the tributaries, and overlay the trade routes. In this endeavor, recordings become the coordinates that begin to flesh out the map’s heretofore blank spaces.
Madly You is valuable in this regard. Daunik Lazro, Joëlle Léandre, and Carlos Zingaro are all but unknown to the typical American improvised music enthusiast, whose knowledge of Paul Lovens centers on his work with Schlippenbach Trio. Theirs are names seen occasionally in English language magazines, usually in connection with CDs available only through mail order services. Their stature in this supposedly peripheral Europe, and their respective and shared histories, entail few familiar reference points.
For them, Madly You would be a jolt, albeit a welcomed one. Even for the unusually motivated American, who has managed to hear these improvisers in performance, and to snag a good number of their recordings, the album imparts the concentrated sense of discovery so valued in the pursuit of improvised music. Conversely, at a time when improvised music is perceived in some European quarters to be slipping into a comfortable middle aged genre, this music is devoid of the stock gambits giving such prattle its limited sway.
The ensemble’s palette immediately engages the ear. Given the hegemony of the soprano and tenor saxophones in improvised music, Lazro’s use of alto, the once dominant jazz ax scantily represented in improvised music, and the equally seldom heard baritone is refreshing. On the higher horn, he blends well with the frequently soaring Zingaro; on the lower, he and Léandre can produce a fearsome rumble. Completed by Lovens’ small percussion orchestra, it is a palette adaptable to the bold strokes and subtle shadings filling these canvases.
The ensemble further distinguishes itself by how it employs these colors. Instead of machine gunning the listener, letting him or her in on an inside joke, or testing their polemical rigor, the ensemble directly communicates their passions. Additionally, these improvisations exude an impulsive, mercurial quality, the sense that the direction of the music could go almost anywhere at almost anytime. Subsequently, the listener is drawn into the unfolding of the music on its terms, not the ideologues’.
Among the score of reasons, committing improvised music to recordings is a risky proposition because it creates a familiarity, even an intimacy that would otherwise never exist had the tape not been rolling. It is therefore incumbent upon improvisers to issue recordings that prolong the listeners’ initial stage of discovery, that keeps them in a state of wonder long enough that they at least temporarily discard their assumptions, and in the case of Americans, their maps. Daunik Lazro, Joëlle Léandre, Paul Lovens, and Carlos Zingaro do exactly that on Madly You.

Bill Shoemaker

Depuis belle lurette ils se croisent, se côtoient ou se rejoignent, forcément par amitié, dans diverses configurations, sur scène, dans une gare, un studio ou un bistrot - plus rarement dans une église. Certains ont fait un bon bout de chemin l'un ou l'une avec l'autre, entrelacs de relations intenses d'échange et de respect mutuel. Mais jamais ils ne s'étaient retrouvés ensemble.
Enregistré au festival Banlieues Bleues en 2001, cet étincelant quatuor organique et charnel invente avec une exceptionnelle similarité-unité d'intentions et d'attitudes un cadavre exquis d'historiettes douces et crues, un palpitant work in progress sans autorité ni virtuosité étalées, sur le ton de la conversation. "Je vous aime à la folie" avait coutume de dire le Duc : c'est bien de cela qu'il s'agit ici in fine. Élégance et générosité.
Gérard Rouy l Jazz Magazine l Octobre 2002

Ces quatre poètes du son n'ont pas besoin de rechercher la vérité. Elle est en eux et dégage d'emblée une telle puissance, une telle source d'émotions qui prend naissance comme ça, d'un signe, d'un claquement de doigt, d'un regard qui leur permet de partir pour un parcours onirique dans un monde imaginable, que l'on se demande comment l'art peut aboutir à un tel résultat fait de cris, de coups, de grincements, de brutalité sonore en recyclage permanent, toujours innovants, toujours appropriés, d'une beauté à la fois ravageuse et renaissante, formée d'âpreté et de caresses, d'une architecture fragile mais résistante à toute épreuve, construction sur le bord du volcan, sans filet, seulement retenue par l'esprit, par la volonté de frôler la lave sans se brûler ; parce que sans doute leur sensibilité est ailleurs, dans un contact charnel avec chacun de leur instrument, prolongement matériel et physique de leur pensée elle aussi en travail ininterrompu. Ce disque est un chef-d'œuvre.
Philippe Renaud l Improjazz l Mai 2002

The cover of Madly You depicts leaves in various stages of decay - some new, some close to compost. The image conveys no real sense of shame, just the French comfort with the organic and the understanding that pasteurization (in cheese, in art) takes away from the final product. Likewise, this live recording from the Banlieues Bleues Festival in 2001 carries with it a satisfaction with a full range of sounds - from repetition bordering on monotony to the rapid unfolding of disparate sources. The music here (Iike black music of the '60s, from which all improvised music of today shares at the very least a gene or two) is free from scheming personal or aesthetic agenda and responds not to stylistic exigencies. not demographic exigencies, but to musical exigencies. There are times when the music goes to a quiet place, when it springs from that place to go to a louder one, and so on and so forth, changing and moving naturally, unexpectedly, and yet entirely appropriately, accommodating both the ear and later the intellect.
Lazro, on baritone and alto saxophones, handles both well. His baritone playing has the staying power; his tone on the baritone is remarkable enough to distract the listener from the occasional figures repeated more than perhaps necessary. or the occasional stilted, academic-sounding line, few though those instances may be. For the most part Lazro creates rich, saturated sounds, as opposed to lines enunciated with a perfunctory tone. His extensive palette, freely and rapidly accessed, unifies the ensemble, which is not always attributed to a lead instrument like the saxophone. Lazro's ability to operate in that capacity is part of what makes him unique and this group convincing.
Lovens in particular adds immeasurably (for an illustrative and historic example of Lovens, hear him with Cecil Taylor on Regalia, recorded for FMP in Berlin during the '80s.) He earns accolades for his evasion of the drummerly; he does not noodle, beat, vamp, nor perform any of the appropriations through which one is expected to sit quietly. When Lovens is required to fill the ensemble with sound, he does so with no lack of strength. Indeed, his navigation of both small and large on the drums, his speedy movement between the two, as weIl as accession of, when appropriate, any convention of the drums heard in the last sixty years, sets him apart as a drummer posterity will remember, one whose each recording should be carefuIly considered. Furthermore, Lovens' use of the musical saw is surprisingly effective, underscoring further his musicality.
Zingaro on the violin is a welcome inclusion; on the one hand, he propels the group along just as weIl as Léandre's bass, and on the other, adds pitches that instantly modify the quality of the ensemble's harmony. The violin is also a perfect accompaniment to Lazro's baritone. The lowest pitched of the commonly available saxophones has a certain ease and range in the highest harmonic register, and similar pitch with the violin at its highest harmonic tone. Lazro plays convincingly throughout, combining sound - rather than licks - with that around him. The same goes for Léandre, who also exploits the instrument for aIl its sonic possibility rather than using it as a vehicle for his chops.
Together this contemporary ensemble does aIl the things that a musical ensemble concerned with the conventions and the sounds of now should be doing, and in a language that never capitulates to shenanigans.
Stanley Zappa l Bananafish l September 2003

Daunik Lazro, Carlos Zingaro, Joëlle Léandre, and Paul Lovens are names that register just below the radar screen ("all but unknown to the typical American improvised music enthusiast," as Bill Shoemaker notes in the liners), yet each has been performing and recording in the genre of free improvisation for years to excellent effect. The two tracks presented here were recorded live at the Banlieues Bleues Festival, and capture the freshness of the group's approach. Zingaro may be the dominant player, his violin a constant presence that holds the center with juts, jabs, and occasional extended lines. Lazro alternates between bari and alto, keeping the listener on his toes, while bouncing notes like silly putty off the strings. His work in the lower register is particularly effective on Madly You where at times he could almost be mistaken for an early bopper standing on one foot. On allo, he cries like a baby and evokes diverse emotions: long tones, wails, and caws. The Englishman Lovens may be the odd man out geographically, but he brings his revolutionary approach on percussion to fill in the holes with unmistakable gracefulness. When the history of this kind of music is written, the under-exposed Lovens will undoubtedIy be given his due: his ability to spray a room with magical Iittle sounds adds immeasurably to the total effect. Léandre's dense bass supplemented and interlaced by her aggressive vocal incantations and utterances raises the intensity. The quartet revels in the sort of European free improvisation that knows few boundaries, yet this is not a blowout session with volume mostly at the extremes; it is subtle in its interactions, logical in its fIow, and wondrous in its effects.
Steven Loewy l Cadence l August 2002

Without exaggeration, this more than one-hour slab of free improvisation recorded live last year, features an object lesson in how to best express this subtle art. It's particularly noteworthy because it shows that, unlike the hushed minimalism that characterizes the work of many younger improvisers, these seasoned pros aren 't afraid to express their craft at the volume it deserves.
However, even with the alto and baritone saxophone of France's Daunik Lazro plus the percussion and musical saw (!) of Germany's Paul Lovens the sounds don't degenerate into blaring discord either. After all, Lovens, the master of selected and unselected percussion, has had a long relationship with folks like British saxophonist Evan Parker and German pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach who know their notes and timbres. While Lazro, who is probably — undeservedly — the least known of the four musicians here, has in the past matched wits with such sonic shamans as American multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, Parker and American trombonist George Lewis. He also played with the final two improvisers here — French bassist Joëlle Léandre and Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro as long ago as 1985. Léandre, who also specializes in performing John Cage's works, often played with Zingaro and Lovens in the 1990s, as well as with practically every other improviser of note from British guitarist Derek Bailey to Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer. As multi-disciplinary as Léandre, Zingaro too moves back and forth between composed and improvised sounds, as well as music for theatre, film and dance.
With this combination of individual expertise, the four can divide and subdivide amoeba-like into a variety of combinations. Lazro and Lovens, for instance, can function as an Energy-music power duo; while Léandre and Zingaro can pretend to be a conventional string duo. Lazro, Léandre and Lovens can offer the sort of speedy, minute interactions possible in a sax-and-rhythm-section free improv trio; and classically trained Zingaro can soar as a solo violinist.
But there's a lot more here. Some of the most interesting collaborations occur when the deeper tones of Lazro's baritone mesh with busy low string tugs from Léandre's bass. Other times, an entire birdcage of distinctive cries is unleashed when the saxophonist's alto gets together with Zingaro's high-pitched fiddle tones.
Individually, Léandre's guttural throat cries and rolling vocal impersonations sometimes go up against screeching strings and perfectly timed bashes from Lovens' kit; while at one point Lazro, alone on baritone, seems to be playing the head from Shirley Ellis' 1960s hit, The Name Game.
With a leaking hiss of baritone sound in the background, Lovens not only demonstrates how well music can just be made with unattached cymbals, but at one point goes the treatments crowd one better by doing this completely acoustically. During the CD's second, shorter, instant composition, the whoops and miniscule cracks you hear sound as if they're escaping from a souped up PowerBook. They're not. It's Lovens' musical saw, with a sound as old as vaudeville.
Want to experience exceptional EuroImprov in all its glory? Go no further than Madly You.
Ken Waxman l Jazzweekly l July 2002

It's almost incredible that after so many years as active improvisers, violinist Carlos Zingaro and saxophonist Daunik Lazro remain so under-recognized. One would be tempted to say this quartet project with drummer Paul Lovens and bassist Joëlle Léandre will provide them a key to the international festival circuit -- or at least wish for it. The name Madly You encapsulates the prime directive of this outfit: mad improvised music, feverish and highly personal. It draws on one's deepest, most primal emotions. It doesn't resort to endless slabs of notes, nor does it go to the other extreme, thinning out the sounds to leave only a carcass. All four players understand what makes free improv exciting: tapping into one's soul without any preconceptions. Recorded live during the Banlieues Bleues Festival in March 2000, this eponymous album features all the rage, all the love, all the joy and despair these first-class improvisers are capable to display while still keeping their ears open. The 41-minute title track starts on a dime, reaching full throttle before the CD player has a chance to reach the two-second mark. Immediately, the interplay between Léandre and Lovens, Léandre and Zingaro, and Zingaro and Lazro on alto saxophone surround the listener from all directions. Later, the saxophonist's round baritone sound weaves lines of an almost erotic nature around the bassist. The 20-minute Lyou Mad begins with a baritone solo that exemplifies once again why Lazro should not be overlooked anymore: sensual, subtle, enrapturing. A trio of violin, bass, and musical saw halfway through provides one of the best moments before hell breaks loose. A captivating listen…
François Couture l All Music Guide l June 2002

Alto and baritone saxist Daunik Lazro is an under-recorded figure - he's on a couple of other Potlatch CDs, including a duo album with violinist Carlos Zingaro, and I recall him on an excellent 1996 disc on Vand'œuvre with Evan Parker and Joe McPhee - though as Bill Shoemaker's sleevenote points out, his instruments haven't been the first choice in free music. Compared to the fraternity of free jazz wildmen, his concept is cool; which means that though this music doesn't approach white heat intensity, there are passages of red heat. His concept couples well with Zingaro's keening, buzzing violin. Paul Lovens is best known for his work with Alex Von Schlippenbach and The Globe Unity Orchestra, and he works his idiosyncratic percussion kit with great delicacy. Joëlle Léandre commented in her recent Invisible Jukebox (The Wire 216) that she doesn't make much distinction between free jazz and Improv, and this fine quartet date, recorded live at the Banlieues Bleues Festival last year, certainly has overlapping affiliations.
Andy Hamilton l Wire l May 2002