SIBYLLE

After three studio albums with Spaced Out Martin Maheux decided it was time to record another album for his project MMCircle.For this reason he established both a jazz and string quartet, the later features Martine Gaumond, Sarah Ouellet, Catherine Lesaulnier and Jeremie Cloutier, while the jazz ensemble features (besides Maheux himself) Frederic Grenier on string bass, Ivanoe Jolicoeur on trumpet/flugelhorn and Eric St-Jean on piano.This sophomore work was released in 2006 under the title ''Sybille'' on Unicorn Digital.

As with almost all personal projects Maheux'es approach with MMCircle has nothing to do with the powerful Prog/Fusion of Spaced Out.''Sybille'' is an album swirling around the territories of Classic/Free Jazz and Chamber Music with a strictly academic sound and a high degree of composing difficulty.Depending on the track the eight-piece ensemble established by Maheux either explores the innovative and improvisational side of Jazz with long individual solos and based on horn sections, piano lines and string bass grooves, or penetrates the mysterious world of Chamber Music with haunting string arrangements, featuring viola, violin and cello, having mostly a deepressive atmosphere.In the two longer pieces of the album, the 15-min. ''Aller simple'' and the 13-min. ''Metamorphose'' Maheux makes an attempt to blend these different styles into long movements with loose structures and weird grooves, sometimes these tracks deliver a strange KING CRIMSON-ian feel through the violin work of Sarah Ouellet.But for the most of their length all the arrangements are hard listenings, based on stretched ideas and extended solos.

An album heading only to the mystified audience of the Prog community.Partly jazzy, partly pure Chamber Music, partly even R.I.O.-ish, ''Sibylle'' will only find some fertile ground among the fans of the more experimental and academic side of music.