Alexis Martin has been a solid fixture in the Quebec music scene for about thirty years. A well-regarded studio drummer (Daniel Bélanger, Harry Manx, Damien Robitaille, Isabelle Boulay, Robert Charlebois…), album producer, screen composer, and co-founder of a studio (Le Hublot), he covers a wide range. Curiously, he had never yet dared to embark on a recording adventure as the leader of his own project. This is now accomplished with Les pôles volume 1, a silky jazz album, with a scope commensurate with his work for cinema. There is something, yes, visual and atmospheric in these seven original tracks, where notable figures of the improvised scene like André Leroux, Emie R. Roussel, Sheila Hannigan, Mathieu Désy, etc., come together.
The seven compositions draw beautiful scrolling patterns, like seductive and soothing journeys, as the overall mood remains quite soft, even though it doesn’t lack rhythm. Martin evokes, for example, in a modern-impressionist language, a striking setting (La dune du Pilat) in France, while he highlights, in November, the sweetness of the arrival of a new life with much tenderness. Is it your soul, or is it raining? invites to kindness with its Satie-esque colours, while The Shifting of the Poles undulates like the Earth’s magnetic field against a backdrop of pedestrian rhythm.
Here is an album that is savoured slowly and invites active introspection.
Alexis Martin – Drums, Percussion, Keyboards,
Moog Synths, Programming
Jean-François « Fafoui » Gagnon – Trumpet, Bugle,
Valve Trombone
Marie-Josée Frigon – Tenor & Bari Sax, Bass Clarinet
André Leroux – Soprano & Tenor Sax, Flute
Emie R. Roussel – Piano, Keyboards, Fender Rhodes
Sheila Hannigan – Cello
Mathieu Désy – Bass
