Marc Ducret Albums (10)
'Le Sens de la Marche'
Release Date 1/1/2009
Tracks 5
Label Illusions
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What The Critics Say
As auteur Stefan Winter finally gets around to re-releasing his back catalog (his JMT sides were issued in the U.S. during the 1990s and distributed by Polygram, but sadly are no longer), certain forgotten gems creep to the surface. This set by guitarist Marc Ducret is just such an item. Trumpet and flügelhorn boss Herb Robertson, trombonist Yves Robert, and percussionist (organic and drum machine) François Verly join with Ducret to play through a series of loose, wiry compositions by the guitarist where harmonic and dissonant interplay are given weight and equal consideration with textural, dynamic, and spacious elements that are structured, tempered, and finally juxtaposed. Ducret plays both electric and acoustic guitars on these knotty sides, and his melodic sensibility is here more evident and striated than anywhere else in his catalog. The beautiful "Can I Call You Wren?" features strummed acoustics and edgy electrics, which are layered on top of a drum machine and dissimilar contrapuntal melodies by Robertson and Verly. Or there's the swampy bottleneck intro on the title track that gives way to a minor-key investigation of short linear phrases that gradually open up onto an entire new harmonic precipice before exploding into an array of noise guitar and drums. These are just two examples of one of the most engaging recordings from his shelf. This is provocative music to be sure, but it is refined and restrained, elegant even. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Qui Parle? Well, Marc Ducret, for one, along with Leslie Sévenier, Philippe Agaël, and Laurence Blasco. And Anne Magouët sings. With all this vocalizing en Français, linguistically challenged stateside listeners -- even Ducret's fans -- may be inclined to pass up this Sketch label disc in favor of the French guitarist's purely instrumental offerings on labels like Winter & Winter and Screwgun, fearing non-comprehension of the CD's contents. They shouldn't worry about that, because Qui Parle? is arguably Ducret's finest recording as a leader to this point, displaying the full range of his talents and placing those talents into a most impressive setting overall. Plus, the vocals -- mainly spoken word snippets that arise here and there -- don't really make up a sizable portion of the nearly 75 minutes of extraordinary music on Qui Parle? Of course, hearing Ducret and Sévenier read an excerpt from nouveau roman author Alain Robbe-Grillet's Dans le Labyrinthe and understanding those words is important in contextualizing the music surrounding the words, but the music stands on its own regardless. Here, Ducret and his dependable trio partners of bassist Bruno Chevillon and drummer Éric Échampard are augmented from track to track by a host of other instrumentalists on piano, saxophones, trumpet, tuba, sampler, violin (by Dominique Pifarély, who goes unmentioned in the main CD credits), and more. As listeners of Ducret's solo recordings know, the guitarist is an expert in the use of space, often letting his chords and notes ring out into silence at carefully chosen moments. Qui Parle? reveals those same skills at times, but also shows that he is a varied composer who knows the best places to use density and how to integrate diverse instrumentation into his music. There are more ideas stuffed into this CD than most Ducret listeners might be prepared for -- everything from avant rock and jazz to free funk to modern chamber composition to acoustic folk and blues are part of the guitarist's lexicon. Yet, it all fits together and is far more than a series of disconnected experiments in style. Who speaks? Marc Ducret, in a language any music lover could understand. Knowledge of French may be helpful now and then, but is far from mandatory. ~ Dave Lynch, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
This is guitarist and composer Marc Ducret doing what he does best: playing in an electric trio setting and redefining the place of the electric guitar is postmodern music. Accompanied here by Bruno Chevillon on double bass and Eric Echampard on drums, Ducret goes after the guitar's linguistic sensibilities: its syntax in improvisation and place of emphasis, "speech," "song," and nuance in the setting of an improvisational trio. On "Dialectes," he states his case early on, melding shimmering single-string phrases with open chords until Echampard enters with a syncopated polyrhythmic line of fire. From here, it's ostinato in overdrive as two tones alternate for domination with one another, not exactly in counterpoint, but in consonance with the rhythmic attack. For over 15 minutes, Ducret plays against his own phrases, culminating and condensing his cadenza-styled approach into a force that moves against stasis in the phrase, à la Jimi Hendrix. On "Lust," a remake of an earlier solo track, Ducret moves the entire intonation angle over into another dimension by treating the guitar's chorded rhythm patterns as if they were played in the tonal territory of a zither. As Chevillon engages with slapped rhythm and pizzicato inversions, creating intervals between Ducret's statements, the guitarist moves over one and shuttles the interval into a scalar figure, moving through a modal, deep-hued blues and then into a spare yet pronounced chromatic angularism that is reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." Turning anywhere for a kind of solace or comfort, to find the guitar in a place that is familiar and sonant as itself, one is upended, displaced by Ducret's metalingual commentary on the guitar as somehow more and less than itself in musical, particularly improvisational and jazz, discourse. There are plenty of overdriven, volume-screeching attacks and stun-like power chords here, albeit designed in different modular contexts, but all of them add up to the same thing: In Ducret's virtuoso hands and mind, the electric guitar is an instrument that hasn't yet begun to be tapped for its timbral or phraseological potential. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Guitarist Marc Ducret has done a pair of solo guitar albums for Tim Berne's Screwgun label, one each for acoustic and electric guitars; Un Certain Malaise is for electric guitar. Opening with a live recording called "What Did I Forget?"/"Old Brown Shoe" (yes, the Beatles' tune) Ducret departs from his older style of linear, arpeggio-heavy playing and instead digs deep into the tonal possibilities of a guitar turned to stun volume and tuned to an open E. His style here is reminiscent of Sonny Sharrock's heavily percussive, relying on the lower strings for base and ballast as fragmented chords are sliced out of the maelstrom in a riff formation while charging up and down the neck to fill the rest of the space with dulled strings and the occasional bent note and drawing a rock & roll in overdrive rhythm out of the instrument. Elsewhere Ducret explores the dynamic range of the instrument, without the use of special or digital effects. He's playing single and double strings, hammering them at low volumes on one or two tones, reducing the sustain level as mush as possible while still trying to allow for individual note identification. This part of his process is best illustrated by the track "Detail." But there is also a noticeable jazz element on this album, as denoted by the appearance of the improvisations "Méfiance" and "Le Bruit Court." For fans of solo guitar recordings, Ducret's experiments and compositions are more than dexterous or fascinating -- they are downright musically edifying. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'La Theorie Du Pilier'
Release Date 7/9/1996
Tracks 8
Label Label Bleu
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