[CP 049 CD] Bernard Bonnier; Casse-tête +

2012 reédition of this seminal early Creel Pone banger, now complete with both Bonnier's CAPAC single as well as his collaborations with Gisèle Ricard, covering virtually all of his Quebec-era, post-Apsôme output!

Jackpot! One of my all-time favorite outsider Musique Concrète / Pop crossover gems - now seeing the contemporary light-of-day thanks-for-like-the-umpteenth-time to Mr. P.C. C.P...

This one might need a little bit of justification for those of you not exactly jazzed about the concept of a late 70s Canadian Perrey & Kingsley style melding of the electronic Avant-Garde(s) and... Disco-Gunk. I’ll start by reminding you that Mr. Bonnier here was responsible for the “Realization” of Pierre Henry’s “Cortical Art III” - meaning that he was the one turning the knobs and flipping the switches during that fateful evening back in 1973. Whatever happened to Mr. Bonnier, you ask? Well... much like Henry’s prior assistant, Eliane Radigue, Bonnier went on to compose and produce music of his own using the skills that he learned at Apsôme and elsewhere within the French Electro-Acoustic studio system...

Tthe difference between Ms. Radigue and Mr. Bonnier? Bernard decided to make a “Dance Music” record (and I use the term “Dance Music” lightly here...) using his Musique Concrète skills/CV... and what a monster pastiche of seemingly in-compatible threads; the Field Recordings (long stretches of Luc Ferrari style documentation), synth-weirdness, and epic tape-manipulation(s) of the INA-GRM school of composers in a Möbius-strip lock-meld with Quebecois mid-70s “Jerk” (Bonnier moved to St-jejan-Chrysostôme shortly after the “Corticalart” years) yielding something even more bizarre than any number of Jean-Pierre Massiera (another Francophone experimental electronic/pop music nut; see Maledictus Sound, Horrific Child, etc...) productions.

Parts of this sound like Liquid Liquid covering Bo-Anders Persson’s “Proteinimperialism”, others like Jon Appleton’s “Chef d’Oeuvre” recast for zombie-crooner micro-groove LPs played through David Jackman’s wind-tunnel-of-the beyond. There’s really something in here for just about everyone... this really pushes a few of my very hard-to-get-at buttons (namely the drum-groove-slowly-phasing-out-of-time-in-full-stereo-spread one...)

It’s clear that Bonnier was having a great deal of fun throughout, and in fact it’s one of the more fun/friendly entries into the Creel Pone canon... but don’t let that stop you from checking out just one hell of a weird early-electronic / one-man-against-the-world jam. Lovers of sound rejoice.