(SUITE)

After breaking up Wondeur Brass and still toying with Les Poules, Joanne Hétu created this group for more wild adventures on the same label Ambiances Magnétiques. Indeed Justine might even appear to be to Hétu what Nimal was to Debile Menthol and l'Ensemble Rayé to JM Rosset?. The third stage of their respective musical rockets. The fact that these groups appeared in the French-speaking side of their country and more or less existed during the same years (from 82 to 95) and both played music close to avant-garde and RIO helps making another parallel between the two careers. Both of them were close to EtronFou Leloublan, Art Bears and Samla Manna, musically speaking, too, both defending a certain calculated madness in their music, also to create many theatrics on stage. The main difference between Wondeur Brass and Justine is the departure of two members of the brass section, leaving Hétu as the solme member still blowing in her instrument, while Trudeau replaced Gruber on bass.

Suite is a rather long (65 mins) suite of tracks where the typical madness of French- speaking Rio reigns supreme, along some often dissonant music, even if the dissonance never get deeply dissonant. All of the music is written by Hétu and the texts/lyrics are handled Danielle & Diane (the old WB members) and sung by the trio, often sounding like Dagmar Krause of Slap Happy, HC and Art Bears fame). BTW, guest Zeena Parkins plays electric harp on the opening track. As the booklet mentions, Justine is about scores, techniques, reality and improvisations, order and disorder, pleasure and seriousness. Just as Hétu is the leader of the band, her saxophone is ever more present, sometimes alone, pulling sounds to raise the hairs from your spine, screeching and scratching, appealing repelling and appalling at the same time, but somehow strangely hypnotic. Their singing is often playful with the French language (as is generally the case with Ambiances Magnétiques releases) and the accent is very neutral, so it shouldn't be too much a problem to non-native speakers.

In some ways one has to "wondeur" whether if this group was not Miriodor's ater ego, both groups hailing from Montreal and having hit/toured the European continent between 89 and 91. XCertainly worth hearing for every RIO fan, but if a certain level of mastery of French is indeed needed, Justine will make it easy for you to follow the texts

JUSTINE were a four piece, all-girl band from Montreal who released two albums in the 90's. "Suite" is their debut from 1990. Led by sax/vocalist Joane Hetu this is an incredibly adventerous album where Joane offers up some chalk board scratching-like vocals and sax. Man the sax is so dissonant, but the vocals?! All four girls sing, plus we have a sax, keyboard, bass, drum setup. They arose from the ashes of WONDEUR BRASS who also released only two studio albums. That band were a six piece(all girls) on their debut from 1985 with three horn players and guitar.

You now know why they had the "Brass" in their band name with all those horns. Although their second and final release from 1987 features the exact same four piece lineup that would follow when they changed their name to JUSTINE. Why the change of band's name? Well, less brass with the sax only, but also this is far more crazy and avant. They let it all out here folks. This is their vehicle to go far into that avant style. Some mention MIRIODOR, some ETRON FOU LELOUBLAN, regardless, this band is unique. The picture here for their bio is actually of the band WONDEUR BRASS as we can see all six girls, it's not JUSTINE, just sayin'.

I get such a blast out of this album, and while it goes too far into the abyss of the avant-garde, I can't help but be enthusiastically impressed. Oh, and we get Zeena Parkins guesting, playing electric harp on the opener. She was in NEWS FROM BABEL prior to this, and would go on to play with COSA BRAVA and many more bands. My top three includes "Nous En Avons" my favourite with that determined sound as drums, sax and vocals lead the way. "J'ai Perdu Le Temps" is great as well with those pulsating sounds and beats. Catchy with some interesting ideas, especially concerning the vocals. Also "L'arbre" makes my top three. She almost yells the vocals here as the drums pound away. Organ and more follows. She gets pretty theatrical before 2 minutes.

It is pretty amazing the prog scene that Quebec could boast about in the seventies. Well, it didn't end there, that's for sure. One of my favourite albums from 1990, but yes that was a weak year for my music.