Jean-Christophe Renault, piano & Didier Laloy, diatonic accordion – Hors-piste – homerecords.be 4446008 **** [Distr. by Albany]:
Two more fun albums from the unclassifiable Belgian label, these featuring the much-maligned squeezebox. An accordion duo is quite an unusual sound in the U.S., perhaps not so much in Europe. The one instrument being chromatic and the other diatonic makes for more interesting melodic improvisations. All 11 tunes are originals by the two accordionists and they mix French/Flemish folk, pop, rock, classical, jazz, you-name-it in a lighthearted and fun stew. The notes are only in French (you can’t see it but I just shrugged my shoulders).
TrackList: Frost Waltz, Seven, The wooden-legged sportsman, The two pennies waltz, Freaks out, Half Round, One more night on the train, Ambroise’s forest party, The drop, Folk Prog, November’s March.
The differences in the second CD are that the second keyboard instrument of the duo is a chromatic piano instead of a chromatic accordion, and all 11 tunes except one are by the pianist in the duo. That other one comes from Franz Schubert. This session seems a bit more staidly classical, though it has plenty of lighter humorous touches as well. For example “Les petits doigts Bulgares” (Little Bulgarian Fingers) exhibits a strong influence of folk music from the Balkans. The closest translation I could come up with for Hors-piste seems to refer to skiing off the standard tracks, and that’s snow in the cover photo, so perhaps it fits in with the crossover nature of this disc (though attributing accuracy to Babel Fish’s translations would be foolhardy – see this!).
TrackList: E.F.G.D., Ikona IV, Hors-piste, Les petits doigts Bulgares, Der Leierman (Schubert), Valse pour un sosie, Land & Freedom, Souen, Valse Blanche, Ziguinchor, Blue Ass.
– John Henry
