Éclat

From his island off Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, young composer and musician, Jeremy Labelle, continues an exploration into links between classical orchestration, electronics and the Reunionese maloya, whose codes he strives to redefine with a sense of mischievous transgression. Together with a string quartet he pursues his musical quest as ever influenced by rock and the repetitive movement that infused a state of trance and shook the classical music scene in the 70s.

After two introductory numbers drawing a direct line to Labelle’s previous recording, the album takes off with a powerful invigorating staccato in ‘East Afri Auro Pa’. Maloya is present as an old friend, it comes and goes throughout. In fact the truly attractive pieces of the album are those where Labelle abandons the strict rules of etiquette in classical composition and shifts into more abstract electronic saturation with traditional rhythms of La Réunion: ‘Mes Mondes’ and ‘Dann Ron Maloya’. Using overdrive sounds created from the quartet material, he pushes the music to the extreme with heavy distortion on ‘RON’. ‘Spirit of a Far History’ and ‘Sleep Sweet Mbira’ distil a sentiment of melancholy, the former evokes an intriguing neo-Elizabethan score, the latter sounding like an old delicious Creole waltz. Each of the 11 tracks is coherently connected like a symphony.