Le Ton Mite - Passe Compose Futur Conditionnel [CD]

Le Ton Mité is a musical cooperative that revolves around the compositions of itinerant musician, instrument maker and artist McCloud Zicmuse, an American expatriate in permanent residence in Brussels. Having left the United States in the mid-noughties on a European sojourn that never ended, McCloud returned to the States, to revisit places he had not seen, in some cases, for 15 years. 'Passé Composé Futur Conditionnel' is the stunningly realised soundtrack to this voyage. A finely woven double album patchwork of 50 songs, in its 67 minutes it absorbs a lifetime's worth of landscapes, reflections, encounters, anecdotes and movements. In addition to a core group of Belgian master musicians, a number of songs feature the fruitful intervention of Deerhoof's John Dieterich as well as a keyboard cameo from Heather Trost (A Hawk and A Hacksaw), with the resolutely pop sound of the LTM group rendered dynamic by infusions of jazz, baroque, folk & R'n'B. Thus the album takes endless playful musical diversions in its bittersweet stride, including deep-fried protest soul ('Class War'), Seattle-homaging alt.rock joy ('Space Needle'), spectral synth balladry ('Mystery Trail') and micro-bursts of tumbling free jazz ('Gaspillage'). McCloud is your navigator throughout: showman, troubadour, puppeteer, sage...sometimes everything at once.