Ensemble Excerpts. Not long ago, for some, Montreal was the capital of the world. It was bleeding dreary and bloated post rock bands from every municipal orifice. And now, there is only the Arcade Fire. They have acted as imperial fiends, choking out the rest of the population of musicians in Montreal. Ensemble are from Montreal. They are only just alive. First track, introduction, a buzz and gentle spill. Second track, strings, baroqueness, a female voice. Lovely. RIYL Klima. I would hold Klima above all that Canada has to offer. I've been to Montreal a few times. As a former Canadian I was privy to free travel across the dominion. I've mentioned the facades of Montreal before. And there were milk bars and my uncle's full length Wolf coat that shed all through my father's Buick Park Avenue. Later my uncle would be prescribed psychotropics. he would turn dreadful. He would be dreadful to everyone he knew. Later he killed himself. I have a theory about psychotropics, from the idea that they even out the highs and the lows and the danger of removing anxiety from decisions like that on whether to end your life. I am imagining my uncle in a untroubled state of mind when he decided to depart. I met someone last week and I was dreadful to them. After meeting they could only describe to me their unhappiness. I am poison. With a nice record collection. Third track, piano and buzz. En Francais please. It's more of a pop song, less of an exhibit. A bit of the scrapies on the violin, it's sedate, it's measured, it sounds Spanish, as in it sounds like a band on Elefant. Flat and unaffected, a gravelly male voice in accompaniment. Is this to fulfill the requirement for French content? What is this covetous feeling towards french canadian culture? Is it a world marvel? I am not convinced. Next track, an effeminate croon. In nature canadian males have an effeminate lilt to their speaking voice. I have an innate ability to identify members of their species with very many fewer signifiers than others may require. This is something vaguely reminiscent of what Arnaud Fleurent Didier would product. Sing-song, see-saw, middle ground, unimpressive but pleasant. I am under the impression that the French do not feel any particular kinship with their cousins in North America. Is it related to the refusal of French Canadian men to register for the draft in WWII? My father, until this day, has a soft hatred of Maurice Richard for his having scored 50 goals in 50 games while all of the best anglo players were away in Europe fighting Nazis. And the riots and the celebration. Pah. I am not a big fan of Maurice Richard myself. Perhaps I have given myself an insight into the inherent ethnic conflicts in ethnically based societies such as the Balkans. I am enlightened. Thank you ensemble. An anemic emergency horn, soft female spoken word. My father is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, long suffering, it's clear that he has very little time for Les Habitants. In my youth on Saturday evenings spent watching Hockey Night in Canada when on occasion Dick Irvin would be spouting inelegant fluff about "the Rocket" I could hear the grinding of molars and the venting of spleens in my father's torso. The blood would rush to the surface and I knew my allegiance was meant to shift to Darryl Sittler and Mike Palmateer. I obliged, but I was always guilty of a sincere admiration of Pierre Mondu. Partly for his name, and mainly for his grace. This track is exceedingly dull. He's on and on flatly in French, perhaps it is profound and compelling for French listeners but not for culturally chauvinistic monoglots. Next track, a lithe violin, a mandolin? I don't know, my ears, they're rubbish. It is late. This evening the sun was not fluorescent. It was rudimentary, mundane, uninspiring. The fumes from forest fires that scattered the photons have moved into Kansas. Farewell radiant sunsets, we shall miss you. Is this music to listen to sunsets to? No. possibly music for reviewing socialist militias, the Durutti column, Leon Blum's audience for his hair trimming. It's nice. I prefer when she sings. It's still mediocre but more pleasantly so. I had high praise for this record some time ago. I will admit to not actually ever having made it this far while listening before. I am a very busy man. I have youtube videos to post. I have Ponderosa Pines to inspect for the dreaded Mountain Pine Bark Beetle. Denver is infested. Run for your lives! Write musical laments for the Lodgepole pine, in four years there will be but one left in the entire state. Call Candy Claws, a eulogy for the Lodgepole pine, a split album by Firebreather and Candy Claws. Marvelous. when all of the Lodgepoles are gone then will fall the Ponderosa and Scotch pines and soon we will truly resemble the Atacama. And this year instead of the plague of locusts we have the next plague--moths. So many moths fluttering past as I watch the story of Egypt's greatest inventions. I am always so skeptical when these people so confidently re-enact life in ancient cultures. WHat is to say that all of these monuments to eternity on the Giza plateau. Luxor, Kanais were not composed of the same sort of flippant public exercises in masturbation as is on display with most public art today? At the thornton police station there is a ludicrous statue of what looks like two rock-em sock-em robots in a specious pose. What is to stop a cultural anthropologist 300 years in the future from claiming some great religious significance for this statue? What's to stop some overcredentialed PHD from claiming a road side billboard for hooters as evidence of a great fertility cult that existed in the Poudre Valley 1000 years ago? Nothing. I hope to be around in 500 years. I am enjoying this track, the title is in french so I am not going to type it out, it was an instrumental and was the most marvelous thing on this album thus far. Not to radio telegraph static, mass coronal ejections. This is truly lovely as well. She sings unremarkably. It's part of the whole. It's egalitarian. We are sui generis, except when we are not. The Bloc Quebecois was nearly voted into extinction recently. Could they not have trotted out the one legged lion Lucien Bouchard one more time. Is Lucien still alive? Is Jacque Parizeau? Lucien was victim of the flesh eating bacteria. That is a mark of distinction. It is also a comment on socialized medicine. MRSA is rampant in Canadian hospitals, and SARS too. When my aunt was diagnosed with Cancer she was sent home to die. She was 68 years old. Social justice required her to die. This is the compact. And before her was my grandmother, 76 and stricken with colon cancer and given aid and comfort and little more. My brother and I in the waiting room feeling like aliens watching the Moscow Olympic on the CBC on a black and white television while playing bumper pool. The music is not making me nostalgic, I was born that way. Next track, dreadful! He can't sing. We should start a letter writing campaign to disabuse him of any aspirations for future vocal endeavours. If this was the only Ensemble record ever I am not sure the world would notice. This is the second to last track, the words are in French, they are at a frantic pace and it's nasal and flat and silly. This should have been an instrumental. Perhaps he was in a boy band in a previous life, in the Pandava Boys, with their stage mother Kunti, on the sub-continent in their yellow trousers and bowl haircuts. It was marvelous. This is not. It is decidedly irritating. I do not recommend this album. My word carries weight with no one so an anti-recommendation is like an echo in space. It is over, thank goodness. Last track. Dissonant strings or horns???, rudimentary recordings, her voice. For the next record they should hire Klima for voice. On the next album they should retire instead and spend their evenings on stools at milk bars listening to French Mittens on the jukebox.