Lazro, Daunik

Curare

Label: NoBusiness Country: Lithuania

"This collective trio, consisting of Daunik Lazro on baritone and alto saxophones, Jean-Francois Pauvros on guitar and Roger Turner on drums & percussion creates a wide variety of interesting soundscapes that test the boundaries of improvised music on this album, which brings together selections from two live concerts.

"Morsure" opens the album with atmospheric low moans, scrapes and clanks. Escalating guitar and drums develop a chaotic maelstrom. There is a dynamic downturn to open percussion and an ominous feeling. Saxophone screeches are overblown with fear and angst. Brief probing honks percolate with slow and spare texture buzzing and scraping in "White Dirt." Sounds bubble up and fade out like in a dream, where saxophone groans against a rusting industrial backdrop as if fighting to stave off entropy and decay. The music builds to paranoid screams, insular and foreboding.

"En Nage" develops boinging and twanging guitar and scraping percussion which become a very cool sounding reverberating against themselves, playing sound off against silence. Raw saxophone enters, punctuating with guttural shrieks, like a branding iron stamping it's mark on the music. Nasal alto saxophone swirls and cries like a lonely infant, engaging the percussion storm of crashing cymbals. Shifting to a low buzz, Lazro moves back to baritone and Pauvros tries to peel back layers of the music with ringing guitar. Background radiation builds like a coming solar storm, and saxophone shrieks around shy bass bullying, braying before finally moving the enveloping cacophony to exhausted finish.

"The Eye" concludes the album with approptiately ominous guitar textures panning the scenery like the Eye of Sauron. Controlled baritone saxophone moves through the backdrop before switching to pinched sounding alto grappling for footing. Faster the music moves into a whirlwind of sound, drums thrashing and saxophone wailing. Soon, the battle is over and quiet saxophone forms poping sounds and swirls of air, scraping & rattling amongst the quiet."-Tim Niland, Music and More