For those unaware, L’Ensemble Infini is an intergenerational octet bringing together some of Montréal’s most active experimental musicians around drummer Guy Thouin, a leading figure in Quebec’s counterculture (Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec, L’Infonie).

With its debut album Volume ∞, the group draws on six decades of creativity to produce music that is open, dense, and fluid, where free jazz, collective improvisation, electronic textures, and kaleidoscopic collages drift together in a unified psychedelic flow.

This incredible album is the result of an expansively intricate session like no other one in Guy Thouin’s sixty-year career behind the drum kit; an exceptional and bountiful exploration of what inter-generational music making sparks off when infused with a healthy dose of playful, tongue-in-cheek irreverence.

This is what experimentalists tapping into the embodied histories of a free jazz drummer extraordinaire (with no shortage of musical lives) sound like.

1. Free Parking Transcendantal [01:20]
2. Jhaptala / Milford Spirit [08:28]
3. Tabla Plus [06:21]
4. Rock Memory [04:28]
5. Guy médite et résonne [03:09]
6. Black Hole [06:02]
7. Industrial Jazz [07:24]
8. Cartoon [02:43]
9. Opus II [06:54]
10. Requiem & Fanfare (pour Peter B.) [08:53]
11. Sainte-Marie-Blonde-de-Guy [02:11]
12. Halloween à Québec [07:36]
13. Dream Story [05:36]
14. Le sous-sol libre [01:07]

Literally born out of a basement in Montreal’s Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie neighborhood, the Ensemble Infini open their new collective work on the orchestral stabilizations of Free Parking Transcendantal and then launch into the smorgasbord interplay of Jhaptala / Milford Spirit, the cultured Tabla Plus, the shudderingly emotive Rock Memory, and then come the industrially ethereal Guy médite et résonne, the robustly sculpted Black Hole and the extremely aptly-titled Industrial Jazz.

Along next are the enigmatic animatics of Cartoon and the spiritedly melodious beats of Opus II and they are in turn backed seamlessly by the fervently emboldened Requiem & Fanfare (pour Peter B.), an aching yearn that threads throughout Sainte-Marie-Blonde-de-Guy, the veritably cinematic Halloween à Québec, the new set rounding out on the big band swing sounds of Dream Story, coming to a close on the emotively fuzzy Le sous-sol libre.

L’Ensemble Infini:
Guy “Yug” Thouin: Composition, batterie & percussions / Composition, drums & percussion
Elyze Venne-Deshaies: Direction, saxophone ténor, clarinette, clarinette basse & électroniques / Direction, tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet & FX
Félix-Antoine Hamel: Saxophones ténor & soprano / Tenor & soprano saxophones
Andrea Prochazka Mercier: Saxophones ténor & soprano / Tenor & soprano saxophones
Scott Thomson: Trombone
Belinda Campbell: Piano, Rhodes, Synthés & voix / Piano, Rhodes, synths & voice
Pablo Jiménez: Contrebasse / Double bass
Raphael Foisy: Guitare électrique, synthés & électroniques / Electric guitar, synths & FX

Invitée / Guest:
Marilou Lyonnais Archambault: Harp (track 2) / Harpe (piste 2)

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