AQ&F 2025
& FRIENDS –
Live Quintet 2025
French ensemble open their genre-defying fusion extravaganza for public viewing and leave the listeners awestruck.
Arnaud Quevedo’s collective may not have issued a lot of fresh material since 2021 when the La Rochelle musician and his combo published their first concert album, yet the band’s second onstage report feels welcome. Laid down in the absence of audience, “Electric Tales Live 21-02-26” failed fully reflect the combo’s flights of fantasy, while this offering does exactly that – by exposing, rather impressively, the group’s improvisational talents. In front of the crowd they’re able to demonstrate, in style, how pieces which warmly guided sonic spectators through melodic mazes of "2nd Life" and earlier records fare when unfettered, if not necessarily set loose. However, there’s so much more to the onstage delivery of those tracks than mere musings on a particular array of passages could result in.
Although a few numbers on display are extended in comparison with studio originals, the elegiac “Ryoko” was reduced in length for stronger impact, not only showing Quevedo’s mastery of alto sax, in addition to guitar and keyboards, but also revealing the riveting joviality and overt trad-jazziness of this mini-epic that, placed closer to the platter’s end, will contrast the previous tracks which boast a relatively contemporary edge. It’s already quite apparent in the opening pairing of “Dry” and “Loo” whose delicately interwoven layers lean towards cosmic prog rock even before Noé Russeil’s bass and Hortense Mailhos’s drums provide the song with a solid groove, and Eloïse Baleynaud’s vocals lead the band’s heavenly harmonies into surprising bossa nova – the genre the finale of “Hindsight’s” should render climactic. Such sublime elegance and piquancy conspire to take the increasingly funky “Any 2.0” deep into despair and then to let Arnaud’s frenetic riffing off the leash and allow Julien Gomila’s reeds go off on a tangent in order to explore the farthest reaches of euphoria.
Once there, “Prologue” picks up the rhythmic slack for an inspired instrumental exchange and tight knots of female and male voices – eliciting the punters’ cheers along the way – that the two-part “Electric Princess” drenches in folk sensuality and swiftly turns into an intensely intimate experience which rich tones of Quevedo’s six strings make mesmeric. Still, lulling the listener is strategic here, as Journey” introduces sweet ferocity to the ensemble’s dynamic palette, and Fripp-to-Blackmore-esque anxiety of “Ekinox 2.0” proves to be a deceptively enchanting escape from this goosebumps-evoking gloom. A pity “Mushi’s Forest” wouldn’t fit on the album’s CD version and enhances solely the record’s digital variant, because there’s the genuine, exhilarating exit in it, one heavily involving the audience – a vital ingredient in the glory of “Live Quintet 2025” as a whole. Simply magnifique.
*****
