TRAVAUX PRATIQUES

With his last album L'Apostrophe, Albert he had already worked with the Bela Quartet (I'll let you guess what are this ensemble's major influence) and he had carried on in various works with Anne Bitran and her show (2006 I think) and some film music Le Pressentiment for actor JP Daroussin (released 2007). Both works had used the quartet and now in Marcoeur's tenth album Travaux Pratiques, he's still busy exploring possibilities with the quartet. With only his two brothers as other musicians (aside Albert's multi-instrumentalism), the ambiance stay relatively the same as l'Apostrophe, but the text seem to relate more with 2001's Plusieurs Cas De Figure where Albert was attacking a few personalities, here he seems to attacks "les beaufs" (best translated as the mindless pack of society) and more precisely their habits such as TV, smoking, ambitions and conflicts (of interest?), and its consequences (stats, women and forced libido, competitiveness etc?.

Sooo, the loops used inside the movie are the direct source of this album (or at least the start of more experimentations, made into a show called Travaux Pratiques in Dijon in June 07, and subsequently recorded afterwards to see release in spring 08? Right from the start Bourrée En La gives you the main ambiance with the quartet being the focus of the music throughout the whole album, sometimes with acidic lyrics Si Les Fumeurs) sometimes a bit deeper (Stock De Statistiques), but it seems that he is less humorous than previously. The music is also peppered with electronics, but keeps a slightly dissonant feel as it always had. While the quartet's string-only sound is modern-classic-sounding (ala Bartok), we're tempted to seea little of AZ or UZ in the music, and it's only partly so, because the music has much vocals, which not the case of these two formations. Is TP a more essential album than Apostrophe or any other Marcoeur album? I don't believe so, but then again all of his album are at least worth a hearing, beit from 35 years ago or from last year.