Nous les avons vus au milieu des champs d’oliviers, captant le chant des cailloux et le froissement des vents. C’était à l’occasion d’Horizon Vertical, le film de Christine Baudillon. Nous retrouvons aujourd’hui, intactes, quelques-unes de ces captations.
Entre eaux et cendres, Carole Rieussec, Jean-Kristoff Camps et Daunik Lazro se relient à nouveau. Pour les deux premiers, il faut froisser le plastique, activer moteurs et machineries. Il faut capter l’imperceptible, les ondes suspectes. Il faut relier le dérapage des bolides au grave baryton de Daunik Lazro. Pour le second, il faut que s’échappent les souffles, que le rauque soit fauve. Et au milieu des ces conversations venues d’ailleurs et de là-bas, que se déterritorialisent et que s’emportent ces mille nouveaux mondes. Luc Bouquet (Le Son du Grisli)

« ..On s'élance, on risque une improvisation. Mais improviser, c'est rejoindre le Monde, ou se confondre avec lui. On sort de chez soi au fil d'une chansonnette... »
Extrait de « De la ritournelle » de Messieurs Deleuze et Guattari (in Mille Plateaux/Editions de Minuit), dont nous ne pouvons que recommander une nouvelle fois la lecture. Cette publication en est une bonne raison.
DAUNIK LAZRO est un des rares improvisateurs dont il est possible de posséder, et d'écouter, la discographie en intégralité. La contrainte ou la nécessité ont fait, font, qu'il ne sature pas le marché, distillant ses interventions à intervalles de bonne durée, tout au long de sa carrière, comme il se doit pour l'artisan. Chacune de ses apparitions gravées mérite l'attention. La collaboration avec les KRISTOFF K ROLL remonte à l'époque de la création de « Le petit bruit d'à côté du coeur du monde », oeuvre majeure de ce trio atypique, oeuvre essentielle à la compréhension du coeur du monde, qu'il convient de réécouter... C'est lors des sessions de captation destinées au film – hautement recommandé de Christine Baudillon consacré à notre saxophoniste rebelle (« Horizon vertical ») que furent enregistrées ces sons, en 2009. On y perçoit une « tonalité » nouvelle, une tension inédite, la voix du saxophone enveloppant avec douceur une musique plutôt industrielle du duo « électro » de Frontignan. Dans ses notes du livret, Carole Rieussec évoque la couleur liée à l'acoustique particulière de l'espace où ils jouèrent. Espace que l'on peut considérer particulièrement inspiré, à l'écoute de ce beau poème sonore. Destiné à toutes « zoreilles ». Dino (Revue et Corrigée)

Quem tem mais uns aninhos de consumos jazz estará lembrado, com certeza, de que por alturas do PREC o saxofonista Daunik Lazro era uma presença habitual no nosso país, em colaborações com os Plexus de Carlos “Zíngaro” que, regra geral, terminavam com interpretações jazzificadas da Internacional.

Depois disso, só o vimos e ouvimos a tocar ao vivo em Portugal por três vezes: numa digressão com o violinista português e com o percussionista franco-vietnamita Lê Quan Ninh, logo no início da década de 1990, num concerto do Jazz em Agosto de 1993 com Joe McPhee e o Quintet Distico, e mais tarde numa quase desapercebida apresentação no Blues Café, de Lisboa.

Se parece esquecida a contribuição seminal do músico para os primeiros desenvolvimentos do jazz criativo nacional, no seu país, a França, Daunik tem estatuto de lenda – foi um dos introdutores da “estética do grito” no Hexágono, prosseguindo as abordagens de um Albert Ayler. Para ele, tratou-se de uma radical mudança de vida: até então, o seu nome estivera envolvido com a vaga dos “novos filósofos” saídos da Sorbonne.

Foi devido a esta ascendência na cena musical (e também intelectual e política) gaulesa que o duo electrónico de improvisação Kristoff K. Roll o chamou para dois projectos, o homenageante “Portrait de Daunik Lazro” e depois “Le Petit Bruit d’à Cotê du Coeur du Monde”, um inusitado mapa sonoro de África em que o sax barítono do convidado surgia num fantástico despique com um comboio a vapor.

“Chants du Milieu” é o novo episódio dessa colaboração, mostrando-nos um Daunik Lazro cada vez mais afastado dos modos e das formas do free jazz, mas tão brilhante como quase sempre.

Curiosamente, o disco tem uma inesperada dimensão acústica – os trabalhos de processamento de Carole Rieussec e Jean-Christophe Camps são discretos e há uma clara preferência por um uso cru das chamadas “gravações de campo” (“field recordings”) – regra geral, recolhas de falas realizadas em vários pontos do mundo, sendo reconhecíveis as captadas em Chiapas, território de ocupação zapatista no México, e no continente africano.

Essa moldura humana dá um forte carácter cinemático à música. Pomo-nos a imaginar cenas e situações, acabando por ficar embalados numa narrativa que, não sendo determinante nem linear, é imersiva e nos conduz ao longo do seu fluxo. De repente, tudo termina como se o tempo não tivesse passado. Nada a fazer senão colocar o CD de novo a rodar… Rui Eduardo Paes (Jazz.pt)

[…] Chants du Milieu on the other hand reunites the baritone saxophonist with Kristoff K. Roll a Paris-based sound art duo consisting of Jean-Kristoff Camps and Carole Rieussec on electro-acoustic devices, with whom he made an African field-recording trip in 1994.
Not that there’s anything rural or tropical about the nine improvisations here, created to be featured in Horizon Vertical, director Christine Baudillon’s feature documentary about Lazro. Besides the processed verbal patter and ambient radio-sourced sounds KK Roll captured are the crunches, clatters, drones, flanges and pulses that arise from the duo’s ring modulator and otherwise electronically altered programs. Undeterred, Lazro frequently appropriates the auditory space, piercing the static and unaffiliated mechanized timbres with unvarnished reed propulsion. This can take the form of tongue slaps, altissimo shrills or more commonly chalumeau blowing.
An extended variation of this is the sardonically titled finale “One Microphone for All”. Throughout as the nearly monotone quivering patterns vibrate to siren-loud, conveyer belt-like rumbling and back to insouciant circuitry rustles, Lazro’s moves from one sound field to the other spitting out subterranean buzzes and rustles, with every partial audible along with the root sounds.
“Milieu Du Chant” is distinctive in itself since the introduction of dense saxophone pressures intermingled with voices soon gives way to a broken chord intermezzo which links crunching electronic flanges, staccato baritone lines and what sounds like a muezzin’s call to prayer. Consisting of dial-twisting static mixed with barely heard radio-sourced music Lazro’s response on “Forêt” is to interrupt the granular loops with rhino-like trumpeting, mouth breaths and key percussion.
Just as there are no jungle echoes on Chants du Milieu, there’s nothing Jazz-like about Miettes & Plaines’ improvisation despite the combo make up of two drummers and a saxophonist. If anything Doneda’s timbres are even less forthcoming than Lazro’s. Frequently circular breathed or emphasized with in-and-out inhalation or reed kisses, the saxophone strategy is designed to complement slight drum-stick scratches on cymbal tops and pops on the horizontal drum’s sides and top.

Defining and intriguing programs from veteran French reedists, these programs demonstrate conclusively that Lazro continue to be involved in novel avenues of expression. Ken Waxman (JazzWord)

Kristoff K. Roll is the duo of Carole Rieussec and Jean-Kristoff Camps, heard here playing electro-acoustic devices. They are joined by Daunik Lazro on baritone sax for nine, mostly short pieces which I am assuming are all improvisations, though I could be wrong.

Throughout this recording I kept wondering what electroacoustic devices were being used, as "Premonition" opens with somewhat lo-fi sounding singing (sound files or perhaps a tape?) quickly joined by bass rumbles and multi-phonics on the horn. Much of what follows balances between poles of disparity and union, the physical acoustics of the sax sometimes in marked contrast to electronics and sometimes blending seamlessly into them. Metallic bangs and scrapes, industrial whines, field recordings of various stripes and occasionally perhaps an identifiable instrumental sound all fall into play.

There are many fine, longish passages of multiple texture-rubbing, as well as the odd moment of rapid-fire interaction. Lazro pays close attention to timbre and room tone and the electronicists alternately build on or subvert what the horn is doing. It's like listening to a man playing a saxophone in a room while the scenery around him changes rapidly and unexpectedly. My favorite bit is "Foret", wherein Lazro sounds like he's across the room, overblowing till blue in the face while the Rolls quietly murmur and whine in the other corner. Toward the end a loop conjures a distant memory of an old King Crimson record, just for a second. "Milieu du Chant" sounds, for all the world, like a busker playing a ballad in some large airport while an asian voice makes announcements over a public address system. Jeph Jerman (Squid's Ear)