When it comes to naming names in the all-encompassing landscape of contemporary music, Jean Derome's eminence remains relatively unquoted amidst the sacred cows of the last decades. A first-class reedist and composer, he's indelibly associated with René Lussier — specifically, in the duo Les Granules — beyond significant proprietary works (random memory selection: 1988's Confitures de Gagaku, on Victo). Derome has shown time and again that his idiosyncratic creativity, compositional skill and ability to put a theory into artistically fructiferous practice are second to none. In its clever mix of conceptual consistency and stimulating interplay, Résistances clearly explains why.

Though partially scored, the composition's motility principally depends on the nineteen performers reacting to previously learned hand signals. After acknowledging the crucial elements of orchestration in conjunction with the intrinsic influence of electricity in all forms — including the overall tuning — it takes a moment to realize that the scope of this opus reaches far higher than a simple "conducted improvisation" (note the involuntary irony of the term "conductor" in this context).

Across a plethora of intermingling styles, the ensemble — comprising several among Derome's regular partners in crime — connects with the basic vibe through surges of energy dressed as eruptions, conversations, screams or drones, the whole informed by a cracking musicianship. Notwithstanding the considerable emancipation allowed and the absence of jazz-related stereotypes, the lingering sensation is that of a finely regulated mechanism. Still, serendipitous mutations occasionally materialize. The bulk of "Piétinements", for example, resembles Igor Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring played by Pink Floyd circa A Saucerful Of Secrets, lysergic slide guitars and all. In a pair of collective blasts we couldn't help thinking — in principle — of Frank Zappa's Weasels Ripped My Flesh. The absurdly jarring funk of "Mélodie 2" flowing into a marvelous "Danse Finale" may indeed prompt someone to start jumping around the house.

Please consider the above references as a mere reviewer's divertissement. In reality, there's so much shifting of acoustic identity and abundance of inventive playing here that coming to grips with this particular form of Derome's imagination could trigger intellectual paralysis in the easily affected. The remedy lies in the very cause: treat the patient to a few additional hours with this remarkable album; then it's get up, pick up your mat, and walk. Unless one's dead for real.