If you have not heard the latest release from frenetic prog band Poil yet, check that album-of-the-year candidate out. Grand Sbam is a collective of creation, research and musical experimentation that defends living music in all its richness, complexity and universality. It brings together professional musicians from multiple and complementary traditions and practices (learned and popular, current and old, acoustic and electronic), mostly graduates from CNSMDs in Lyon and Paris, others self-taught. Offering a varied instrumentarium, with a timbral subtlety rare, associating contemporary composers, classical and baroque musicians, rockers, traditional musicians and improvisers, each creation of Grand Sbam represents a unique experience, an aesthetic knot crystallizing the sum of influences and experiences of its members at a time. The Grand Sbam, a geometrically variable ensemble, explores and clears an unbridled, fertile and unpredictable aesthetic ground, while resolutely adhering to a contemporary writing approach.
Notably, Poil's Antoine Arnera, Boris Cassone, and Guilhem Meier, playing keyboards, bass, and drums respectively, team up with Mélissa Acchiardi on vibraphone and percussion, as well as vocalists Jessica Martin Maresco and Marie Nachury, for a five-track romp. Not unlike PoiL, the overall sound is reminiscent of quintessential French RIO group Etron Fou Leloublan with a touch of the Cardiacs. Jagged rhythms and crazed, almost delirious, singing are prevalent. Maresco and Nachury combine two-part voice, spoken-word, and chant with a sense of general weirdness. Arnera's analog keyboard contributions add to the spaciousness of this effort as Le Grand Sbam alternates between all-out avant-rock complexities and more atmospheric passages, some of which sound improvised. In particular, the pairing of Meier and Acchiardi adds a level of rhythmic sophistication that is both rare and welcome.