Review Summary: Taking the “math” in “math rock” further than most, Chevreuil manage to
create intricate and delicate compositions that still exude a punk-rock drive
and minimalism of sound.
Chevreuil were a two-piece rock band from Nantes, France that formed in 1998 and released their first effort as a split 7″ with fellow Frenchmen
Ulan Bator in 2000. Also of note is the fact that they were labelmates (on the label RuminanCe) with another more well-known French “math rock” band that also formed in 1998,
Cheval de Frise. Yes, they may have formed at the same time, in the same place, on the same record label, with the same four letters of their band names, but make no mistake: Chevreuil created a
very different style of “math rock” than Cheval de Frise.
Capoëira was the final release by Chevreuil, clocking in at around 34 and a half minutes over the course of ten (really nine, “>>>+/-<<<” doesn’t count) blistering tracks of quad-amped electric guitar and synths paired with athletic (and at times, simply spasmodic) drum kit playing. Perhaps “blistering” isn’t the right word for it, as the music is never played at a particularly high tempo, nor is the instrumentation particularly “fat” or “noisy” in the way we are familiar with from other two-pieces such as
Lightning Bolt or even (on the more math-y side)
Planets. Instead, Chevreuil employs moderately distorted guitar, 80’s-style sawtooth and/or square synths, and clean-sounding drums in a mind-boggling way.
The staple of Chevreuil’s sound here is the heavy use of both polyrhythm and polymeter, in combination with odd time signatures (I personally spotted a 7/4 and a 13/4 when listening through, I’m sure there’s more) and a technique which I’m not aware of any music-theoretic name for, but which seems appropriate to call “metric displacement”. Just as a quick rundown/refresher, “polyrhythm” refers to multiple ways of subdividing a “metric span” (e.g. a measure could be a “metric span”) all on top of one another. “Polymeter” refers to multiple basic metric spans, all on top of one another, e.g. 3/4 on top of 4/4. “Metric displacement” is the term that I’m using for a canon-like device where the beginning of one independent part (the “1” of the first measure) occurs at a different time than the beginning of another independent part. In this case, Chevreuil are displacing often entirely different parts (unlike a canon) and often displace by amounts that are not an integer number of measures, which is extra disorienting... or interesting, depending on who you ask.
Don’t let all of this jargon talk get you down, though. While several of the things that Chevreuil does in this album are quite complex and require careful composition and performance to pull off, there is still something strangely danceable about
Capoëira. The seeds of essentially all the compositions (with the exception of “Chanteur de Charme”) are really quite straightforward, even catchy. Because Chevreuil use all of the aforementioned techniques in such complex and collaged ways, it limits the way that they write the individual parts. Anything more than punchy and laconic riffs would quickly become unmanageable within Chevreuil’s composition style as shown on this album. As such, they are somewhat comparable to bands like
Battles (although they predate Battles by two to four years), especially considering the looping techniques that both bands use. Chevreuil, however, display a more raw and powerful energy combined with considerably more complexity all shoved into dense song sections, like a restrained punk-rock Milton Babbitt.
The flow of the album is reasonable; not much can be said about the structuring of the album as a whole other than its stylistic cohesion, since all of the songs work just as well when standing alone. The primary break that
Capoëira offers to the listener is “Chanteur de Charme”, which occurs closer to the end of the album and is a short, percussionless, nearly ambient piece consisting of sparse looped guitar plucks in the style of
Brian Eno’s
Music For Airports.
With even 34 minutes of Chevreuil’s music, it’s perhaps understandable that a listener could become fatigued before reaching the end of the album. One thing that can be said about
Capoëira is that it is consistent; essentially all of the tracks consist of (more, or less, extended) loop-pedal experimentation to the umpteenth degree. For an album with both feet in the “experimental music” camp, this makes sense. That being said, for anything more mainstream-sounding than that, one would expect more variety in the large-scale compositional structures and in the dynamics of the music.
Capoëira generally shies away from playing quietly or evoking different timbres from the instruments at work. Don’t let this, however, take away from the fact that
Capoëira’s compositions are wonderfully intricate and playful at the same time. The technical feats on this album are not to be understated, and Chevreuil show that they are more than capable of making technical and experimental music sound sincerely interesting.
