LE SACRE DU TYMPAN

LE SACRE DU TYMPAN
LA GRANDE OUVERTURE (2008)
320 KBPS

Sometimes it's tough translating a French play on words. Tympan is French for eardrum, and Le Sacre du Tympan is a play on "Le Sacre du Printemps", the French title for "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky. See what I mean? Some things are better off unexplained. But does the music of this big band for the 21st Century really need any explaining? Well, with seventeen musicians (saxophones, trumpets, trombones, tubas, flutes, percussion, guitars, bass guitars and drums), a zest of jazz, a touch of rock and a (collective) open mind, perhaps it's enough just to know that as well as being an accomplished accompaniment to other artists (including Sébastien Tellier and March of the Penguins' Emilie Simon) they have also recorded two albums of their own. "We like to collaborate with people from other musical backgrounds," explains bandleader Fred Pallem. "All the tracks on our last album were born out of encounters with other artists. We adapt to them, they adapt to us. We could have done a whole album with each of them." And listening to the diversity on the album, you can believe it: the group is equally at ease with an Etta James or Burt Bacharach cover as they are playing noisy rock or a faux-porno soundtrack. Which is perhaps why their latest album is called "La Grande Ouverture", which you could translate as Wide Open. Or The Grand Overture. Or perhaps you'll just find that listening to the album itself is explanation enough...

1. La grande ouverture
2. Promises promises
3. La voisine aux oiseaux
4. Sharpening bone
5. Midnight sun
6. Fool that I am
7. Zombi
8. Picasso blue
9. Une épitaphe
10. Compartiment tueurs
11. Grovers corners
12. Country band march