It happens around the third minute of gotta go, the solar tribute to 1990s rap imagined by Valaire, in collusion with the American MC Ciscero. No, your ears are not playing tricks on you, what you hear is indeed an electric bass solo, colored by this pedal. chorus which gives the instrument that curious underwater sound. And it’s automatic: we are back to the moment of a few seconds in the middle of jazz fusion, this sub-genre often mocked, but thanks to which many have arrived at jazz.
“When we started Valaire in secondary school, France [François-Simon Déziel] wore a bandana and played fretless bass”, remembers his colleague Luis Clavis with a big teasing smile. Fretless bass? It is the emblematic instrument of the greatest jazz fusion bassist of all time, Jaco Pastorius, as well as that of Alain Caron d’Uzeb, the most globally popular Quebec jazz band. That the seventh track of the new Valaire is called BEZU is obviously no coincidence.
“France played sitting Indian on her amp. And he had the kind of hat made of the same fabric as an aki ball. Luis laughed softly. “France was a great aki player! »
Here, however, the parallels to be drawn between jazz fusion and the sixth album by Valaire, born Misteur in Sherbrooke in 2004, almost 20 years ago, end. Futons has nothing, either, of a return to the purer jazz of Mr Brian (2005) and is based on the same captivating alloy, of which the quintet is a past master, of pop bombs and freewheeling journeys in the lands of less framed instrumental music. A particularly finished piece of furniture on which their lifelong friend Fanny Bloom, their soul mentor Alan Prater and the ivory prodigy Anomalie have all settled.
PHOTO ERICK LABBÉ, LE SOLEIL ARCHIVES
Valaire with Alan Prater in July 2021 at the Festival d’été de Québec
Almost seven years after the publication ofoobopopop (2016), it is less with the ambition to transform a proven formula – using earworms as a Trojan horse at more exploratory moments – than DRouin, Tō, Luis Clavis, Kilojules and France return to Valaire, that ‘with an exacerbated awareness of their luck to have each other.
You should have seen Luis Clavis, last month, during the residence of his tasty solo project at the Ministry, presenting his friend Jules on drums with the same wonder as if he had just met him. “Yes, I am very proud of these guys! “, he launches. And if the success of a friendship was due to this renewed desire to be at the top of one’s art in the eyes of the other?
“Even when I did my project, I asked the guys to be there, because that’s what was the most challenging,” he explains. For me, sitting at the microphone with my little personal songs in front of them was even more vulnerable than working with someone from the outside. »
I don’t know how to put it otherwise: it’s a beautiful story of friendship, what we have. It’s really crazy that Jules came to eat at my place during primary school, that today we find ourselves sharing a hotel room on tour and that, moreover, we don’t get on each other’s nerves. It’s grand.
Luis Clavis
The spokesman of the formation remembers having crossed on the road the guitarist of a popular group who, in his hotel room, fulminated against his singer, who, him, had been invited to deliver a TV performance.
“The guys send me to do the interviews, because it suits them, but there is no leader in Valaire, no composer who picks up more than the other, and it is clear that it helps the longevity of the band, thinks Clavis. I realize more and more the safety of being a group. Having ambition as a five is really less stressful than having ambition alone. »
In memory of Karim
Here’s the sky before we hit the groundthe most introspective piece of Futonslifted by Tō’s trumpet tendrils, borrows its title from a phrase that Karim Ouellet sang on I salute you mariethe last song of Motel Californa (2012) by Qualité Motel, Valaire’s ludic-pop parallel project.
“Here is the sky before we hit the ground, it’s so Karim as a sentence”, observes Luis, gently repeating this sentence loaded with wisdom, which contains all that the poetry of their deceased comrade had of spiritual and rooted . Valaire will obviously be present on 1er April during the revival at the Grand Théâtre de Québec of the show celebrating the life and work of the fox, presented at the Francos last summer.
His departure, “it was a good reality check, says Luis. It was a big reminder that all these moments of music that we share, there is nothing stupid, nothing in vain. It’s not stupid to want to be with your friends as often as possible. It’s all precious. It is expensive”.
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