New Music From Reynols, L’Eclair
Reynols
Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018
(Pica Disk)
“I’m a very famous drummer”—that introduction from Miguel Tomasin, who met music teachers Roberto Conlazo and Anla Courtis at a music school in 1993, led to the formation of the Argentinian band Reynols; Tomasin will also say that Reynols doesn’t exist and that it also started right after his birth.
Tomasin’s bandmates admit that “Humanity is not yet ready to understand him,” and listening to the vital, abstract, and deeply unfamiliar sounds of Reynols in a new, sprawling boxed set, one realizes that appreciation doesn’t require total comprehension.
Minecxio Emanations 1993–2018 mostly consists of unreleased material (including two entire unreleased albums), containing six CDs, one DVD and two booklets with a band history written by critic Marc Masters, stories from collaborators and associates, and a variety of photos, flyers and art.
One disc contains assorted collaborations, including tracks with “Deep Listening” pioneer Pauline Oliveros, the Japanese group Acid Mothers Temple and Dr. Socolinsky, who invited Reynols to be the house band for his national television show about pediatrics.
This isn’t music for casual listening—it’s prickly, alien and entrancing stuff, and it may be difficult for the listener to be prepared for the rough, unsettling soundscapes and barrages within.
Generally speaking, Reynols had two broad approaches; the first approach sometimes is akin to conceptual art, as sampled on the disc “Conceptual Mogal”. In this realm, Reynols plays the Eiffel Tower as an instrument (sounding like a spacecraft launch), records and dramatically manipulates the sounds of unwitting avian participants on a chicken farm, and documents the uneasy noises of public protests and unrest in Buenos Aires in December 2001.
However, Reynols’ other approach went in a completely non-cerebral direction, where the music must purely be felt, and it’s unnecessary (and perhaps impossible) to understand what drove its creation. It’s uncompromising, raw music that may appeal to fans of Kluster, early Half Japanese, The Dead C, noise-rock and free-form psychedelic rock, and some have called this “outsider” music, partially because Tomasin has Down syndrome.
However, his bandmates have a sincere admiration of Tomasin’s unconventional, unfettered creativity and invented language, without a whiff of exploitation or cheap novelty. As Marc Masters insightfully writes in the liner notes, “[Reynols] doesn’t break out of barriers so much as it evaporates them. It’s not that the rules don’t apply in Reynols music. It’s that nothing applies.”
L’Eclair
Sauropoda
(Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)
Composer Camille Saint-Saëns’ 1886 suite The Carnival of the Animals was partially written as satire, with one of its pieces entitled “Fossils” quoting painfully familiar tunes—the dusty chestnuts of his time—out of irreverence rather than homage.
The new album Sauropoda from the Swiss sextet L’Eclair has a title that refers to a classification of giant dinosaurs that includes the brontosaurus, and there’s the possibility that it, like “Fossils”, cheekily refers to music from the past by likening it to extinct species.
However, L’Eclair has more reverence toward its assumed sources than Saint-Saëns had, borrowing heavily from ‘70s funk and disco sources. On the opening track “Still Steeve”, atop a sustained groove, various flourishes pop out cleanly, each jumping into the spotlight and then jumping right back out, and “Castor MacDavid” feels comfortable in a disco groove with warm keyboard riffs and unrecognizable vocal snippets echoing through the proceedings.
The 13-minute “Endless Dave” has time to stretch its arms out, but rather than ramping up the intensity, it uses the time to simply apply layers; it features reverberating psychedelic touches and spacey synth notes, and at times, Fela Kuti is hinted at, with its keyboard chords and rhythmic vibe.
For a marathon track, it’s not quite the sweaty dancefloor stomper as one might expect, and in its last three minutes, synth chords swell atop a switched pattern, with tiny sonic champagne bubbles rising to the surface.
This writer is a sucker for well-crafted, nostalgic funk excursions, and there’s something to be said about good craftsmanship, even if the artistry isn’t extraordinarily inspired. Impeccably recorded, one could pretend Sauropoda is some rare, obscure library record that hovers in its own secure world.
However, this critic can’t help but think that there’s untapped potential here that would thrive if it were less polite and less restrained, but as-is, it’s an entertaining throwback that dances on dinosaur eggshells.