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Bob Dylan, Fragments, Time Out Of Mind Sessions (1996-1997) : The Bootleg Series Volume 17 (Columbia)
A singer who comes back to life cannot help but sing the theme of his disappearance. Meaningful cliché about Dylan and Time Out of Mindreleased the year of his 56th birthday and carried by a single with an explicit title, Not Dark Yet, heart cry way It’s fun from Kurosawa. When the disc was released in September 1997, Dylan was just recovering from histoplasmosis which had put him in danger like never since his motorcycle accident in 1966, and had been living in the limbo of infertility for ages. Impossible then for critics not to declare this disc crowned with a long odyssey of almost seventeen minutes, Highlands, like a swan song – the last great Dylan before the curtain falls, stuffed with eschatological signs. Evidence that Bob Dylan responded to in an interview with Rolling Stone by explaining that his disc approached rather death in general, and that the critics would do well to wonder if it is not theirs that they deciphered there between the lines. The fact is that other great records would come and, when this exciting Fragments composed of three discs of alternate takes, a live and an unreleased mix signed Michael Brauer, it is above all the resurrection of an album in question. Not only Time Out of Mind hasn’t been forgotten by anyone – honored with three Grammys, it’s one of Dylan’s most celebrated albums. But the main interested party has often expressed regret over the way Daniel Lanois had deflected the project to the point of distorting it. Starting with his voice, processed in a small guitar amp to sound like a harmonica, when Dylan, a producer at heart under the pseudonym of Jack Frost, dreamed of naturalistic high-fidelity. The “2022 mix” is therefore there to repair this debatable failure, and we are happy to note that the fetishist nature, bordering on Gothic, with immense influence (especially on David Lynch’s albums…) remains: they were indeed the songs of Time Out of Mind, first of Dylan’s late masterpieces, which were haunted. No matter the sound, these great twilight songs illuminate, unbreakable. Olivier Lamm
Lil Yachty, Let’s Start Here (Concrete/Quality Control/Motown)
Take Lil Yachty, shake him really hard, flour then dip him alternately in beaten egg and breadcrumbs, fry each side in half a century of music, compress in .zip, postage the freezer bag in the pipistrelle price, throw all that at -210°C in the metaverse, and that’s it. Fifth album by the 25-year-old American rapper, Let’s Start Here is a radical about-face after Lil Boat 3 and his frowning trap, a kind of progressive funk operetta with bits of autotune stuck in the throat, a return to what preceded rap but remembers going through rap and suddenly finds himself post-rap , are you still following? And if we border on the KO by originality at all costs, the magnificent Reach The Sunshine final is there to catch us in his arms. Marie Clock
The Psychotic Monks, Pink Colour Surgery (Vicious Circle)
Always welcome a record that starts with a good bassline. A fortiori on an album whose goal is clearly to clear the way – with big jets. Pink Colour Surgery, the third album of the Parisians of Psychotic Monks, does not look like anything we could expect from this abrasive, inspired group, swinging quite gracefully since 2017 between noise, post-punk and garage. Produced by Daniel Fox of the Irish group Gilla Band, the machine looks like a ghost train in a gallery of raw concrete, with rickety wagons, abused by dentist’s strawberry guitars, techno basses and bumpy rhythms, evoking a collision brutal between Blawan, Einstürzende Neubauten, the complete discography of Steve Albini and a mixer robot. One of the most beautiful surprises of this beginning of the year. Today Jimmy Batista
Alkpote, LSDC (Darkover Music)
It’s when an album of this caliber comes up that you realize how used to having to make charitable efforts to find writing skills in rappers who don’t have that many. . Here, it only takes thirty seconds. A haunting intro like a nocturnal thriller, which stretches, and then the beat lands, which squirts these first words in our face: “I’m not here to make love to you, old fuckbag / I’m playing Play 5 on my Samsung flat screen”. The precision of the jet blinds us, in our ears resounds the echo, sack-to-fuck, dish-Sam-sung, we fall on our knees and cross ourselves: thank you, emperor. The rest is to match, a health course in which each activity will put you on the ground, violent, cut to hurt. Of the many rappers who came to perform a feat, he gets the best, such as this verse by the late Luv Resval on Killed a song which, full of ominous birds, spins the creeps. M.K.
National Orchestra of Metz Grand Est, Symphonic poetesses (The Sweet Vault)
It is an Orchester national de Metz in form which is announced in Wagner and Holmès, this Saturday at the Philharmonie de Paris, to hear Symphonic poetesses, an enchanting musical journey from the last fires of French romanticism to contemporary abstraction, via impressionism. It opens with a Wagnerian fanfare with Andromède, by Augusta Holmès, which was honored with a State commission for the centenary of the French Revolution and an opera, in 1895, for the Palais Garnier. Place, then, in the sumptuous diptych (Of a spring morning / Of a sad evening) by Lili Boulanger, crowned with a Prix de Rome before her cruel death at 24, followed by a bewitching cycle by Mel Bonis: Legendary women. To conclude: the lively Little Summer Suiteby Betsy Jolas, engraved in world premiere! Eric Dahan
The Tubs, Dead Meat (Trouble In Mind)
We could never really get excited about Joanna Gruesome, a Welsh group with unreal melodies but a production that systematically brings everything down to asphalt level, following the most horribly marked paths of indie rock. It didn’t take much to catch fire in front of The Tubs, led by Owen Williams and George Nicholls. Always prolific in the making of XXL hits, the two composers of the group have this time wrapped their song in a much more engaging setting, between REM circa 1985-1986 (Dead Meat, That’s Fine), Hüsker Dü (Round The Bend) and – more surprisingly – Richard and Linda Thompson (Snivels). Nine impeccable tracks, without fat or unsightly muscles, all in feverish nerves and electric caresses. L.J.B.
Chihei Hatakeyama, Void XXV (White Paddy Mountain)
Spotify works to lock you into the so-called favorite genres and which may in fact only be repetitive use, such as needing music to support the metro or to fall asleep, your profile eventually becomes expert in “microhouse” or “compositional ambient” at the top of the end-of-year listening report, which all the same looks like a sesame for an imminent stay at the nearest HP. Also the platform takes care never to let you sail without waves of sounds poured out by layers of thick fogs half white noise, half tinnitus or neuronal soundtrack of dazed burn-out. Thus the Japanese Chihei Hatakeyama who seems crossed by some uninterrupted sound Ganges, which he randomly cuts into textured slices, notably in a series of albums baptized Void (empty) and labeled with a number. The 25th has just come out with eight tracks more or less identical to 22, 23, 24 except for a few near-coma echoes. Didier Peron
