I’ll admit, last year’s release for Monotype, ‘C6 GIG (February 2012)’ didn’t do all that much for me. It may sound absurd, given that the point of minimalism is to be, well, minimalist, but it felt somehow too minimalist. Moreover, it wasn’t an exemplar of ‘less is more’ but a case of ‘next to nothing isn’t much at all’.
‘Petite Soeur’ (‘Little Sister’ in translation, his debut for UK label Gizeh) finds clanking percussion and ponderous basslines providing the basslines to Charrier’s piano explorations. At times delicate and rolling, at others discordant and atonal and colliding at improbably angles with tortured saxophone and aggravated guitar, it’s not always easy or accessible. But then there are some extremely moving moments: the acoustic guitar work on ‘No Closed to Be’ may be simple, but it’s effective, even when it is assaulted by counterrhythmic drums, and it’s the battery of percussion that dominates ‘8 Minutes’ (which is actually 8 minutes and 27 seconds long). A range of different forms and styles of percussion vary the tempo and tone of the different pieces, which range from the delicate to the ponderous and the moody.
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It’s a long way from being minimalist, and is, in fact, a challenging and dynamic album that shows Charrier to be a versatile and unusual talent.
Charles-Eric Charrier Online
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