Lounge, mondo jazz & exotica in Les Hommes’ new album ‘Sì, Così’
Esoteric London trio Les Hommes releases new album Sì, Così, a plasma-rippling suite of 11 instrumental cuts that includes pulsar-driven groovetronics, folky modalisms in waltz time and dreamvitations to the cine-lounge. The album transports listeners on a jazzuous trip articulated through 11 stops where sounds in unusual orbits abound, with deep-space vintage organ, euphonic bass clarinet, grooved-out conga, funkified electric piano and sonorific vibraphone.
Founded by organist Rory More, Les Hommes is known for its hypnotic blend of mondo jazz, pseudo-cinematronics, ‘60s Rio batucada and lounge exotica.
In Sì, Così, More re-explores his mid-century Lowrey organ; its oscillators scorched as if on some planetary re-entry. Mellifluous bass clarinet and Arcadian flutes join plangent electric piano and woody, orotund-and-echoing percussion. Resonant vibraphone tranquilly pierces the aural nimbus. The variations-on-a-theme blueprint is there also, this time with a subtle mutation towards the moods of post-‘60s expressions and beyond.
The tone palette, as ever with Les Hommes, is diversified: “Veronique” is quasi spiritualised with thoughts on a modal mood, “Mirage” veers towards Roy Budd, “Sonorissima bay” gently hypnotises with Echoplexing electric piano figures and primitively visceral organ fluctuations, and “Vampo” states its claim to early ‘70s jazzed-out library from Cinecittà. All in all, a tonal and groove farrago of dusty oscillations.
‘Sì, Così’ out on LP / Digitally on Oct. 11th 2024 via Sudden Hunger Records
