Home Rec.
Emmanuel Louis with The Gardening Group :
Play some music about your garden (B,2008)***
Everywhere I come, work briefly or hear music, I am annoyed to see how many people who work, listen or participate in where they are, are so vaguely involved in what happens, not even minding a low proportion and profile of consciousness on what’s there or towards what’s behind all that’s there. It seems that so many people have jobs where they sustain deliberately a minimum of self-responsibility, but on the contrary are always ready to defend. With a self-defence mechanism they want to keep their positions, perhaps even build a controlled environment, with hidden rules forced upon surrounding people, founded equally vaguely upon their wish for no immediate change, so that this territory is kept as empty as possible, and so that it will keep them in slumber as if it’s all about a luxury position. Of course, mediocrity helps here to maintain this position. Otherwise, when they seek just one level up from the plain middle, perhaps also a vague idea of originality or personality or just a louder voice or blitz presentation should be enough to keep them one step ahead of the others. Mediocrity, unlike real creativity and people with heavy backgrounds, also will hate criticism on what’s lacking or not fitting, even when this could be the cry of help for something more content from a more creative person in thoughts, feelings or with more practical talent. Creative inventors in spoiled mediocre environments will be put as much aside as possible, as outsiders, which for them becomes a direct situation where true contemplation could become frustration, while the world is able to continue as long as this survives without new injections of inspirations…
The kind of music, which is based upon some recognizable vague illusions of a content won’t give this area the dying out participations of creative forces, new life, but it will still feed, once more, like opportunities, to be there vaguely and hip without disturbing new content, safe at another occasion, to those who keep things running as smoothly comparable as they wish. For the real creative soul who sees such a minor change of cape, the illusion of its gesture comes over as purely pretentious, for its empty content, which if it occurs occasionally, would need at least compensation in musical directions…
Emmanuel Louis, who came already once from a ‘vague’ project, Funk Sinatra, and who has another absurd cabaratier Mr.Diagonal as guest on two tracks, starts with a safe and attractive classical background as musical fundament, a style which still is being taken seriously by the upper society of ordinary people.
I’m sure the band will have enjoyed playing these light and free classical intensions, while not being aware that with the loose content they are the one who will still be feeding the aforementioned public in potency ready for attending with a new potentionally hip illusion. This might work very well and bring cash, because it entertains well. The instrumental part surely is rewarding on its own, and does not deal with any pretentious content. Personally I would have preferred that, for the absurdity in use of the subject, that at least some musical or content compensation could have made the whole thing more convincing on more levels than with this game, like for instance with some real avant-garde, or true emotional strength or through some kind of ‘real’ experience, with a philosophy, or through a transforming discovery in the absurdity of things and happenings, but all this never happens. Compared to French or Canadian avant-garde examples of the ‘70s for instance, this leaves an empty shadow to all these serious movements that happened before. What is left is post-classical chamber-music mixed with an empty-absurd cabaret-“operetta” (of some sort). After Emmanuel’s previous musical attempts, I would have expected a next chapter for the seeker in illusions, instead of staying there, as if it’s still not time for something more serious and with more depth, and if there still was no time to read a book or learn a philosophy, for a strange or bad experience so that something real would have appeared here for a change, so busy in the drives of thought that there is no time taken to develop chances for real affections. And, in the occasion of the making, and in the absurdity of making inspiration from gardens, also the feeling for the poetry of things is still missing.
Still, however, the music flows, and Michel Van Achter produced it again so perfectly and it also sounds like a serous piece of music, from which, I think, the least thought-over deliberate part of it all, the calm chamber arrangements underneath it still make the whole concept work to convince, hanging enjoyably and well together.
