The duo Christophe Debouit and Charles Lavenac have managed to fuse the 20th century orchestra with the world of digital noise, which in itself would be a feat to be marvelled at, but they did so in an enormous variety of ways that keeps “cédre” exciting and suprising in all its chaotic dissonance and complexity. There is no mysteriousness or overt atmosphere of evil on this record – such sentiments are left for the noise mongers painting their faces and doing grisly record covers. Everything on “cédre” is exactly what it is and is clearly discernible even the most chaotic moments – where the depiction of single bits takes more concentration of course. This open and transparent production adds to an atmosphere of almost academic music construction and it is hard to imagine Debouit and Lavenac as anything else but serious in a sense that welcomes the joy of work and artistic expression, but never letting it get in the way of the body of work ahead of them.

Controll is also still an important issue. There is a moment during the last track where the steady pounding of a manipulated bass sound is opposed to a variety of multplying horn calls. But at the beginning of this section it is just an enormous bass sound and the very controlled blowing of a few simple notes on a clarinet or something close by. A tender and almost intimate moment, mirrored later on in a harmonious guitar line with sombre and soothing bass tones and lots of echo. Think Throbbing Gristle playing Angelo Badalementi’s theme to Twin Peaks for this moment, but don’t let it guide you, it is just one moment. These moments only take half to a full minute before the turn to something completely different, but they show how much care and construction has gone into these tracks. Everybody judging from the first few minutes of unabridled free impro noise at the beginning of “cédre” that this is another record about chaos and dissonance, has been caught in the trap set out. This is a record about the delusion of chaos as well as of symmetry. Because even if symmetry (as in cadence) is a basic formula for western theory of harmony, it can’t live without the chaotic world of dissonance, if only as an opposition to depart from and return to.

One last word: I find the strategy of the Nexosund label, run by Andrey Kiritchenko and Dmytro Federenko (also known as Kotra), to release the more brutal and challenging works as free downloads and keeping the relatively more refined and “straighter” (I have to put this word in brackets in this context) as regular ie. consumable releases, to be really wise and future oriented. I am not sure if this is an outspoken strategy per se, but it seems to be working out that way after all. Maybe the true reason is that these works wouldn’t sell five CDs in as many years but they should be heard nevertheless; a reasoning I can but follow. Moreover, I can only recommend to dear reader to check out the website, download and order whatever sparks your interest. It will be worth it.