Short Reviews [Chromb! - 2016 - "1000"]

I first became aware of the Lyon-based label Dur et Doux when Sean Worrall of the mighty Organ and I were talking one day, and he suggested I search out Le Grand Sbam. I was greatly impressed as to what I heard so made contact with the label where Clement Dupuis suggested some other bands I may also like to discover, the first being CHROMB! They are a quartet, comprising Leo Dumont (drums, percussions, small objects, vocals), Camille Durieux (synthesizers, keyboards, piano, vocals), Lucas Hercberg (bass, synthesizers, vocals) and Antoine Mermet (alto saxophone, vocals, synthesizers, delay pedal), and this 2016 release was their third album. To get an understanding of the band, it is probably easiest to get an understanding of the label with which they are working, Dur et Doux. This is taken from the label site, “Dur et Doux is a collective of musicians, a label and a production structure that praises the amplification and the unusual. Founded in 2008, it now gathers around 30 musicians based in and around Lyon and the Loire and Ain departments…Dur et Doux invents places of acrobatic amplified music in which almost anything can happen. A child of the erudite (dodecaphonism, electroacoustics, atonality) and popular sound revolutions (the invention of the electric guitar, jazz and improvisation), Dur et Doux creates a unique musical space that is open to the world and its music styles, while maintaining a sane mistrust for reductive labels.” Here we have a band who are pushing boundaries, creating music without electric guitar which takes Zappa, Soft Machine, The Residents, John Zorn and Art Zoyd into logical and illogical extremes, blending sounds which have no place being put together, to create something which is strangely enthralling and enticing while at the same time also being harsh and abrasive. They use atonality almost as a weapon to distract the listener when things could almost be getting too commercial and poptastic. It is challenging music, RIO, where there really are no limits. There is a sense of humour, playfulness even, within some of the sounds, but the result is always something which many music lovers are going to find too harsh to be enjoyed. Me? It makes me thing of when I got my first tattoo, “one more of us and one less of them”, as if you find this and like it then you will be part of a collective from which there is no returning. This is music which is challenging, yet is intriguing and real, unlike so much which pervades the airwaves. People need to find this out for themselves, they will never hear it being played on commercial radio, as this is music which makes us think. Harmony vocals are sprinkled through the album, complexity and tight playing with weird time signatures and hooks are de rigeur. Not for the fainthearted, but a delight all the same.