Oliver Alary, a talented French musician formed a musical project that he entitled Ensemble, back in the early 2000s. The aim of his project was to investigate the relationships between ‘melodic noise and disjointed pop’. I first came across Ensemble after Alary remixed several tracks for Bjork, and they lead me to his work. The self titled Ensemble album creates a fusion of genres between pop folk music, and symphonic sounds. The vocalists features are incredibly talented, such as Chan Marshall and Lou Barrow, and leas to the album being incredibly popular.
The performance that I was lucky enough to see was a fusion of an acoustic set, alongside pre-recorded electronic sounds. The guitarist walked onto the stage and began playing the opening melodic chords to the title track off of Excerpts, before the rest of tonights band made their way onto the stage. The vocals were sourced from a sample, and slightly distorted as an experiment from Alary. It was awesome to see musical investigations evolve right before my eyes, and the tracks sounded beautiful after their manipulation.
Sketch Proposals, the newest album is incredible, and to hear tracks from that performed live with a full acoustic band and live vocalists was magical. The project that Alary has formed is something that he should maintain, and I can’t wait to hear them play live again.
Loreena McKennitt
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