Canadian label Séance Centre releases artists who deviate from the norm or bounce musical norms off each other to create something strange yet beautiful. Felicity Williams and Andrew Zukerman blend in seamlessly here. On their self-titled début album »You Can Can« they juxtapose conventional, analogue folk with musique concrète and all its confusion. The title of the opening track »Everything In Time« can be taken as a joke, as arbitrary as it seems musical, segueing now and then into Williams’ delicately breathed verses with accompanying guitar. After a maximum of concretisation, You Can Can leads back into the acoustic ring, where field recordings await accompanied by howling wind and human voices. The irritating horns and rumble beat on »Can Can« might also have their place on Tolouse Low Trax, but the dramatically processed piano makes for a touching ambience. »Papyri & Papaver« doesn’t regard vocal input as singing, but rather constructs a beat with wooden tapping noises around vocal samples, and »Strobe & Streusel« sounds similarly spooky. Just when the sound collages threaten to get out of hand, You Can Can throws in a flawless folk song with »Failure Figures«. A cat-and-mouse game with album maturity, for which you should bring along a fair amount of patience as a listener above all.
You Can Can
