CITIZENJAZZ, Franpi Barriaux

This meeting in the summer of 2021 with one of the most radical duos of the French-speaking improvised scene is a testament to this, and it is undoubtedly in this aesthetic that he finally feels most comfortable. Recorded at the Météo festival in Mulhouse, this concert with drummer Tom Malmendier and accordionist and turntablist Émilie Škrijelj offers a double confirmation: first, Les Marquises is a band capable of building any climate. Secondly, Mike Ladd is a formidable narrator, capable of appropriating these imaginary latitudes and giving them life.

In forty-five minutes of a long, fiery tirade, a science fiction tale reminiscent of Ladd's magnificent Welcome to The Afterfuture, The Kort'dakian Crisis takes us where he wants us to go, that is, into the somewhat hostile and imperiled atmosphere of Kort'Dakian. Malmendier's playing has that urgency that was so important in the first Marquises album. When Ladd slows down the pace, it's unstoppable sweeps that maintain an incredible tension. The drummer is the anchor of the two free spirits: Mike Ladd sucked in by his story, Émilie Škrijelj who takes hold of a permanent movement, moving from her sound-generating accordion to the turntables, which do a lot for the climate of the narration. The young musician always has this amazing creativity that makes every sound effect, every voice disguised by scratching, elements of narrative, incitements to pursue further an exploration that is both the subject of the story and its context.

The freedom that drives Mike Ladd and the Marquesas is not negotiable, it is imposed. It is even the subject of The Kort'Dakian Crisis, its reason for being. At the bend of a raucous electronic rip, at the very end of the track, while the listener has the impression of having run after a rapper from a hostile exoplanet who keeps on hurrying, Émilie Škrijelj comes back to the accordion, like a return to a more embodied atmosphere, while the machine gun of the drums, too, gives itself some respite. A fruitful moment between three creators of worlds who, as often with Mike Ladd, know how to project their poetry in the ideal biotope, even if hostile. A universe that Malmendier and Škrijelj embellish with splendid tears.

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