Daniel Heïkalo - Au Coeur de la Cité Qui Me Hante (Musique Pour Percussion…)

All Music Guide

On previous albums, Daniel Heïkalo has worked with guitar, recorders, electroacoustics, and percussion. Au Coeur de la Cité Qui Me Hante (In the Heart of City Haunting Me) is entirely devoted to the latter. Over the course of 13 pieces, Heïkalo makes use of about anything that can be called percussive: pots and pans, sheet metal, a wood stove, toys, even a few usual percussion instruments. The sounds are often lightly enhanced through electroacoustic treatments and organized in dynamic pieces that stand somewhere between free improvisation on junk percussion, sound sculpture music, musique concrète, and Lou Harrison's gamelan pieces. Tracks like "La Chaîne de Démontage" (The Disassembly Line) and "La Rue des Incroyables du Nord" are raucous and chaotic, but some others, like "Gestes Sonores dans la Pénombre" (Sound Gestures at Dusk), "Orage de Printemps" (Spring Thunderstorm), and "Nuit d'Octobre et de Silence" (Night of October and Silence) are highly suggestive and appear to be metic...ulously composed. Heïkalo is a highly creative artist and a talented percussionist. Despite the restricted palette of the instrumentation, Au Coeur de la Cité Qui Me Hante holds enough variety, surprises, and questions to sustain the listener's interest. Computer treatments remain discreet, limited to multitracking techniques and some speed variations, which means that the album is truly about percussion unorthodox percussion. It doesn't have the immediate appeal of his acoustic guitar releases, but it definitely has that unmistakable Heïkalo touch. - François Couture, All Music Guide Read more Less