Ensemble Infini - Volume ∞ [Cellar Music]

Coming straight out of Montreal / Canada is "Volume ∞", the first full length album release by Ensemble Infini, a multi-layered and multi-generational group effort built and arranged around Free Jazz / Improv pionieer Guy "Yug" Thouin who, rather spontaneously, was put at the center of this new venture back in 2k22 - a point at which he had just turned 82 years old and still was active as ever as a musician. With a double vinyl edition to be released on August 7th, 2k26 and the CD version being available since early May via Cellar Music Ensemble Infini serves a fourteen track menu over the course of 72 minutes, starting from a rather classic vantage point in Jazz but already drifting off into uneasy, intense, at times thundering and dissonant territories with the heavy 8+ minutes cut that is "Jhaptala / Milford Spirit" whereas "Tabla Plus" introduces a somehow TexMex- x Americana- x Post-Mariachi-infused take on slow moving experimental Jazz melancholia for scorching hot summer nights, "Rock Memory" starts with deeply haunting piano tones whilst "Industrial Jazz" weighs in another take on highly intense and nerve-wrecking FreeJazz x Improv for a musically well-versed audience. Furthermore we see "Cartoon" going down a rather harmonic route for less than three minutes, following an ever repeating, yet slightly varied and somehow tragic, almost score'esque main motif performed by a layered array of intermingling, overlapping instruments backed by what seem to be fluttering modular electronics, "Halloween A Quebec" seems to be a rather tempered, yet tentative and playful exploration of late night FreeJazz working its way up to a raw and thundering climax whilst the second to last "Dream Story" rounds things off in a rather lively and ever accelerating big band mode, relatively soon entering breakneck speed and organized chaos just to name a few. One for the rather advanced and musically versed Jazz x FreeJazz aficionado, this is.

Album artwork on Instagram!