It’s funny, this impulse. Funny to imagine something common with a solo for a base. Opening up, fragmenting the first gesture into a multitude of possibilities and exploring its necessary coherence. But MYOTIS V is much more than an extension of MYOTIS, Anthony Laguerre’s explosive and terribly haunting solo. It’s much more than a simple electronic fractal set against brass and skins, the graceful, precise sound of les Percussions de Strasbourg. Above all, MYOTIS V tells the story of how an instinctive obsession disrupts the pulse. In 1933, Schoedsack and Cooper humanized the animal urges of a great ape named King Kong, the better to make them known to movie audiences. Clever. Clever, and quite rightly so, given the longevity of the simian myth. 90 years later, MYOTIS V, on its own scale, creates a similar gesture, humanizing an impulse by electrifying it. Here too, instinct is revealed for recognition. Mezzo-piezzo, illico presto. The rule rings loud and clear. Precision versus articulatory flexibility. Or how the human being, gifted with instinct and impulse, disrupts music where regular pulsation is law and order. An anti-sheriff gesture, in short. Here, order becomes a sonic deluge of dissident electro-a- coustic micro-variations and unstoppable electro-miniature trances. Dramaturgically, MYOTIS V is formidably powerful and tender. In all its secret humility, it declares that it is returning to the living the resolution of meticulous equations. Yielding to the vanity of things with rustproof organic rigor. Not doing so would have been far less wise. And much less musical.
Guillaume Malvoisin