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Chassol’s fourth studio album lumbers into existence with a robotic recital from Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game; laying its cards on the table, that it intends to study ‘play’, in all of its complexity. Of course, Chassol’s previous two releases (Indiamore and Big Sun, respectively) began with similar abstracts; serving both as spoken-word prologue to the records’ themes while subtly introducing us to Chassol’s favourite mode of composition: Ultrascoring.
The Ultrascore technique seeks to harmonise content that would typically fall outside the scope of a traditional record; those sounds and inspirations which nurture the artist’s creative process itself. Whether these be chance conversations, a natural ambience or a loving encounter with either a person or community’s art. The method of Ultrascore seeks to bring this melisma of stuttering influences and competing voices to the fore of the recording process.
The technique, by no means, originates with Chassol, obvious precursors exist in the works of Steve Reich and early minimalist composers, and in both early and contemporary Hip-Hop and House music (see the works of Dan the Automator, METAL FINGERS, The Avalanches, JPEGMAFIA); all prominently using samples of ambience and dialogue to great musical effect in their compositions. What makes Chassol’s use of Ultrascore unique, is his near exclusive use of field recordings, gathered in the process of filming the visual/documentary half of each project. These recordings capture honest depictions and expression of diverse communities’ lives and locality, along with the inherent musicality of that life. Distinct voices and environments, are notated and given musical accompaniments before they are cut and spliced into phrases, revealing their underlying melody and rhythm, around which Chassol builds his jazz-funk suite.
This technique has worked wonders across two projects, charting two of Chassol’s personal cultural odysseys: one through India and the other through his parents’ birthplace Martinique. These journeys produced two rich musical tapestries which managed the mean feat of allowing two diverse but equally beguiling cultures, and their intersecting communities, to speak for themselves.
Unfortunately, Chassol’s latest release Ludi falls a little short of his former brilliance. In its ambition to endearingly portray the sound of play, in both humans and animals, it both widens Chassol’s scope and yet leaves a noticeable void at the heart of this particular piece. Part of this is because Chassol’s focus on ‘play’ means he is speaking to a myriad of different cultures and practices all at once. Unlike a visit to some particular part of the world, where you can be led by the hand and allowed to witness the shared practices of some intersecting communities, ‘play’ has both a tantalising universality and yet a mind-boggling specificity in its infinitesimal instances. What qualifies as play? What are its rules? Chassol himself asks a similar question on track ‘Your Hands’, receiving an initially confused response from his interviewee.
In short, it appears that the concept of ‘play’ is just too broad; at least, if we intend to bring out some underlying melody or rhythm between its manifold instances. It is for this reason that Ludi pales in comparison to Chassol’s previous work – it spends the majority of time bridging the journeys between its people, communities and environments arriving too infrequently at moments of play themselves.
That being said, this is still an amazing album, with an amazing love for its subjects, when it chooses to spend time with them. It’s individual tracks are for the most beautifully wrought jazz-funk, the majority of which stand tall outside the context of the album!
In summation, I am disappointed at the disjointed nature of Ludi. While I immensely enjoy the individual tracks themselves, it fails to meet the high bar Chassol has set himself in the past!
