Toninato & Lecours – Homeostasis

Ida Toninato and Pierre-Luc Lecours have been fine-tuning this Homeostasis for almost four years. The result, hyper attractive, is audible on this album, but was especially experienced live during the last MUTEK fest in Montreal. I was there, on the second evening of the Nocturnes series of the festival, on August 21st, where the sax/electro duo filled the SAT (Société des Arts Technologiques) with its pulsating minimalist energy. A remarkable moment, which made festival-goers whose comments I was able to catch here and there say that it was one of the best music ever. It may be a bit much, but your humble columnist remembers being nevertheless blown away by the performance of the two Montrealers.

Homeostasis, the album, certainly cannot reach the same level of visceral intensity (a live performance is unbeatable in this sense), but it gives a pretty good idea of the enveloping and invigorating sonic universe created by the two artists. Long arpeggios and soundwaves on the modular synth (Lecours) sustaining obsessive figures on the saxophone (Toninato) draw an almost psychedelic framework, but clearly informed by a structural and narrative quality associated with scholarly music (classical).

Soothed by a few occasionally chill, even ambient, tracks, Homeostasis is primarily a super beautiful and invigorating sonic trip that happily marries Trance, IDM, and repetitive Reichian Minimalism, with a bit of Mouse on Mars as a reference. Very good.