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Exhibited at the Venice Biennale

The music from the album Duck Soup by Jean-Jacques Birgé, Jean-Brice Godet and Nicholas Christenson accompanies The Theatre of Apparitions, light boxes by the famous photographer Roger Ballen, at the Arsenale in the South African pavilion of the Venice Biennale.

Un Drame Musical Instantané comes back

February 14, 2022 is a great day as it marks the return of UN DRAME MUSICAL INSTANTANÉ, officially disbanded in 2008.
Spending just a few hours they recorded 15 short pieces that they mixed the following day. The order is preserved, first takes, no cuts, just a rebalancing of the tracks.
Dominique Meens' texts are the guiding thread for Birgé and Gorgé. They find in them the images they have always sought wherever they go, setting the scene which in turn gives the poet wings. His text Plumes et poils refers to the one by Michel Tournier that the Drame had chosen to play with the late singer Frank Royon Le Mée. The bestiary has always been a major inspiration for the writer as well as for the two musicians. But where will they nestle!
The Gustave Doré’s engraving on the cover suggests a tragedy, but it is only a fable by Jean de La Fontaine. When you open the digipack, the movement of the photograph reveals another snapshot. Feather or hair? Feathers and hairs (translation of plumes et poils) !

Huge interview in English

With Klemen Breznicar for famous It's Psychedelic Baby! Slovenian Magazine

Carnage "ÉLU" by Citizen Jazz

The narrative talent of Un Drame Musical Instantané (UDMI) no longer needs to be demonstrated. Whether it be in Rideau ! or, more certainly, in L'Homme à la Caméra, the work of the trio Jean-Jacques Birgé, Francis Gorgé and Bernard Vitet is full of stories and musical inventiveness. This is undoubtedly what led the Austrian label Klang Galerie to persistently reissue the albums of this orchestra, which represents a sort of backbone of creative European electronic music from the 70s and 80s. This is obviously what led them to propose a very nice reissue of Carnage, released on LP in 1985 and never reissued since. A dark work, violent in its vociferations and Gorgé's choice of a blunt guitar on a tense track like "Rangé des Voitures" with lyrics written by Birgé himself. One of UDMI's rare forays into song, yet troubled by all sorts of sonic finds. The cinematographic dimension of the orchestra, reinforced here by guests who are very image-oriented (percussionist Youval Micenmacher, or Michèle Buirette, Elsa Birgé's mother, on the accordion).

UDMI has always been about cinema for the ears. Here, it's a question of rebellion, against a backdrop of the destruction of the Amazon, the construction of a motorway, the explosion of dead wood and the strategy of tension that fed the political backdrop of the 1980s. All the seeds of this can be found in the impressive "Une fièvre verte" that opens the album: "And it doesn't matter what this motorway will cost", the tone is set. The whatever-it-takes is projected in a primary forest, among the cries of the trumpet and the electronic crawls that a chaos slaughters. A sonic clearing, literally and figuratively, a live ecological carnage carried by the oboe of Jean Querlier and the bassoon of Youenn Le Berre. Later, in field/counter-field, we meet indigenous populations, a rhythm that tends towards trance... the balance of power is established, as is a rather powerful narrative arc. This carnage is the opposition between those who destroy the forest and those who live off it: it should be remembered that the record was recorded a few years before the assassination of Chico Mendes, a Brazilian trade unionist who fought against the exploiters of the Amazon. It is also this tension that emerges in 'La Bourse et la vie', a long orchestral piece that demonstrates the rigorous writing of UDMI's musicians. There is an epic breath, and not only in Bernard Vitet's diving trumpet (the bell plays in a bowl of water).

If tracks like 'Cabin 13' represent more classical atmospheres in UDMI's discography, with Vitet's magnificent soaring and Gorgé's haunting playing, let us note that Carnage is undoubtedly the trio's recording where the Zappaian paradigm is most prominent. This is all the more remarkable as it is above all an influence of Jean-Jacques Birgé, who himself admits not to have experienced it. It is in "Fièvre Verte" that it is particularly noticeable, with a real feeling of evolving in the corridors of 200 Motels. As for 'Silent Telephone', it seems on several occasions that we're going to hear Suzy Creamcheese whispering "Are You Hung Up?", as in We're Only in it For The Money. In any case, we must thank Klanggalerie for the reissue of Carnage, another fine testimony to UDMI's modernity.

by Franpi Barriaux // January 9th 2022

L'air de rien in Citizen Jazz