Ah well, here’s a release that feels good. As soon as the first notes begin, if you don’t smile and nod your head, then you have no business being there. For others, listening to Smash Combat led by the duo Ping Pong Go (pianist Vincent Gagnon and drummer Pierre-Emmanuel (PE) Beaudoin) will be an uninterrupted sequence (or almost, at least for the 10 tracks of the album) of small pleasures mixed together like a bag of loose candies. If the candies are an impressive array of influences, all as delightful as each other, let’s say the bag itself would be jazz, which serves as a binding agent, sometimes just mentioned fleetingly. Nevertheless.
Here, one or two examples: Sam Bozen, the first track, is like Daft Punk married to André Gagnon. Ouugh? Super Mario Bros arranged by Giorgio Moroder, seasoned with a bit of Angine de Poitrine (even if it’s not microtonal). Okinawa, it’s Sakamoto rewriting the music of Blade Runner. And Arcadia imagines an epic landscape with a backdrop of powerful drums and ambient piano. Smash Combat, an ultra-nervous frenzy, like a hallucinatory fit of unleashed keyboards, blazing guitars, and intense drumming. And it goes on.
Often, throughout all this, improvised lines that remind us of the fundamentally jazz nature of the two musicians at the core of the duo. The two friends have many friends, and not just any, as all sorts of name-dropping favourites come to make an appearance or two. Carl Mayotte, Lou-Adriane Cassidy, Ariane Roy, Alez Dodier, seem to perfectly fit in this astonishing product they call “Gamer Jazz.” I see no problem with that tag. We are indeed in that kind of energy and attitude.
A funny musical UFO that really hits the mark.
