Jean Néant aka Joni Void, sonic collagist, producer and beat-maker may be most visible as the persona responsible for three singular Constellation albums (‘Selfless‘, ‘Miss En Abyme’ and 2023’s ‘Everyday Is The Song’), but running parallel is their enablement of collective musical invention around Montreal and beyond. Être Ensemble is one of those partner projects. Taking its name from a lost DIY venue in Montreal, the intention of Être Ensemble is not to be ‘band’ in the orthodox sense. It’s more a portal which collects the input of recorded live shows, spontaneous jams and sessions then, through Void’s alchemic touch, re-constitutes the material. So more radical and renewable than a ‘remix’ ever sets out to be.
The first Être Ensemble release ‘CLOSE/SPACE’ drew primarily from two sources, Madeline Johnstone’s electric piano work as Mercury Tracer and Tokyo outsider label Babera’s digital catalogue, an approach which brought a tighter focus to Void’s unbounded montage making. Now the release of the second Être Ensemble album ‘Sans Toi’, once again on the vital Katuktu Collective imprint, sees Néant /Void working more from a conventional collaborative starting point and arriving at a striking, vocal-centric song-space.
The opening cut Prelude signals the transition that the album is heading for. An advancing bass riff pounds while two stark piano notes, a staple Mercury Tracer/ Void- sample source, loop on repeat like ominous chimes. There are pan-pipes, whistling, innocent and fading moments until bam – the low-end loop unsettles, crackling with worn-down hip hop granulation.
Suspense continues on Theme featuring the voice of Void’s frequent accomplice, avant singer-songwriter Naomie de Lorimier aka N NAO. The sombre central loop glitches through the song, gobbling up any mini- soundbites that come close before N Nao’s celestial tones drift and vanish, a dream-wave counterpoint. Luminous and fragile it feels like a lonely song, a mirror air of mid-pandemic isolation.
That specific context seems key to shaping ‘Sans Toi’ as a whole. The album evolved from sessions involving Void and other artists at the La Lumière Collective microcinema/studio in Montreal 2020 to 2021, so during COVID’s peak wave. Natural apprehension, the sense of being stuck, inevitably infiltrates the looping, twitchy, sometimes angry music which the Être Ensemble partnerships germinated. A movie-house setting also seems to feed into the project’s thinking with the title ‘Sans Toi’ referencing a song form French New Wave pioneer Agnès Vard’s classic Cléo from 5 to 7. A film which follows a fictional pop singer, Cléo Victoire, as she waits for her results from a cancer autopsy, the metaphor resonates with the contemporary world of lockdown times. ‘Sans Toi’/’without you’ articulates that unknown dimension from all angles.
Rêves certainly appears woven from such ideas. Featuring Maya Kuroki, visual artist and electro-psyche singer (TEKE :: TEKE, Tamayugé etc) whose slighty-smoked chanson vocals purr over a revolving, gamelan plonk and closing zen-like chime. Things get fluttery around the edges until a surreal pause with vaudeville piano and a doom-casting voice- over. “Our world is just an interruption of the beam, a projected image caught for an instant on an upraised hand” is the message.
The spoken word and the song structure continues through the pulsing, raw trip-hop cycle of Spirale. Set within the droning, treated groans of what maybe Ida Toninato’s baritone sax, the whispers creep in. “The image of you inside of me, like a part of me” Toninato’s vocals hiss with Pharmakon menace before the shuffling beats return. It ends somewhere Lynchian, the sound of rain, innocent cooing voices and a distant folksy harmonica for an added twist.
What’s distinct about this latest Être Ensemble document is that you can sense the sonic connection between a final track and its collaborative material more clearly. On the closing cut Générique de Fin the modified toll of Jarom Osario double bass is fundamental to setting the song’s dark wave aesthetic while his muted sub-slap patter adds depth to the coda’s hip-hop spin. Similarly, leftfield dark-folk artist Gabrielle Godbout (or Anette Zénith) brings a celestial sixties, Nico-ish cool to the mournful lilting lament of Les Couleurs. Here Néant/Void holds back on the cut-ups, let’s things play out and it’s just perfect.
There’s a sense of loss, longing, uncertainty and fear, that drift close to the surface of ‘Sans Toi’, resonating with the unsettling times in which this Être Ensemble project began and softly touching the themes explored in Agnès Vard’s seminal films. Fittingly a sample of the original 1962 song, which gives this album its title, opens Le Deuil -Pt 1. The tune has been sourced by Void before in his Johnny Ripper guise but here experimental harpist Sarah Pagé, layers a shimmering veil over the song’s Portishead complexion. In continuation Le Deuil Pt 2 unwinds in a slow procession of mono-chords, echoing voices and memories of the ‘Sans Toi’ piano line.
Such graphic imagery and well-drawn narrative is a recurring feature of this impressive collection. ‘Sans Toi’ sees Joni Void via Être Ensemble allow the music to stretch out and find a new emotional depth. It’s an album conceived in COVID times but which fast forwards to our complex present with poignancy and punch.
Get your copy of ‘Sans Toi‘ by Être Ensemble from your local record store or direct from Katuktu Collective HERE
