You might know Raymond Roussel, or not at all, probably. He was a French author and poet who died in 1933 and who, for many, was a precursor to Surrealism. No, he did not compose the music heard on this album. It is rather in homage to the strangeness and great originality of this artist’s writings that the Vancouver guitarist Eldritch Priest named his trio, consisting of himself, James Meger on bass, and Brady Cranfield on drums and electronics. No One Asked Us Yet is a dive into sound abstraction, yet interspersed with more or less lyrical lines.
Don’t be fooled by the very first notes of Somnambulator, the first piece of the album: its explosive chords do not represent the entire program, with a few exceptions.
Most of the pieces open windows onto evanescent atmospheres, like zen explorations of strange settings. One sometimes thinks of Metheny or Bill Frisell in their most avant-garde works, with something of Terje Rypdal or Eberhard Weber in the contemplative aspect of the evoked landscapes.
Of the ten tracks on the album, two are covers: Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair (transformed here into a sort of soundtrack-like score for an episode of Black… Mirror), and Five, by Bill Evans, in an angular, brilliant, disjointed, ecstatic interpretation.
A demanding album, sometimes bewildering, but with impressive creative excellence.
