Caloia / Charuest / Fousek – Residual Time
1.18.18 by Ryan Masteller

It’s not easy to know if you’re going to click with somebody. There you are, plopped in a room with two other total strangers, and you’re expected to quickly acclimate yourself to their personalities and ease into melodious conversation? It can be quite a daunting proposition. I mean, go back and listen to Tabs Out 001 – those wallflowers barely talk to each other! Luckily, I’ve been #blessed with a winning personality, humility to boot, and I can keep a collaborative conversation going for a long dang time.

It’s hard to know who knew whom at the very moment double bassist Nicolas Caloia, saxophonist Yves Charuest, and electronic experimenter Karl Fousek first entered a room together with the intention of making music, and there’s certainly no easy way to find out (save actually asking someone, but where’s the fun in that?), but we should mark that theoretical moment on our mental calendars and celebrate it once a year. For it has birthed us “Residual Time,” a 24-minute live improvisation that we can return to and parse and simply enjoy in the moments beyond that evening on July 5, 2016, at Le Cagibi in Montréal, which would be frozen in unreachable time otherwise if someone hadn’t had the wherewithal to record the performance. Kids, take it from me: someone’s always recording you.

The players flit around each other as “Residual Time” unfolds, each moving in and out of the spotlight with confidence and trusting in the others’ accompaniment. Slowly the piece moves through its iterations, with Caloia, Charuest, and Fousek exploring the sonic foundation of the experiment and building on top of it a mazelike architecture with hidden passages and side quests. If this was the trio’s first meeting (and in the end, I highly doubt that!), then we could point to their mutual curiosity as the binding element that keeps the musical conversation progressing. These three are certainly curious scamps!

“Residual Time” is available from the Warsaw, Poland, label Mondoj, released along with this gem of a gem by GDFX. Get ’em while supplies last!