As the United States continues its latest series of changes, curiously evolving into something that some of us might deem unrecognizable and uncharted territory, it could be helpful to find new perspective on what the USA even is. Were we just remembering this all wrong? How much of this was here the whole time? And how can we really define a place that is made up of so many different, wildly incompatible things?
Nomadic composer/inventor McCloud Zicmuse, leader of the “musical cooperative” Le Ton Mité, seems to have had similar questions on his mind. Raised in America, Zicmuse left the states in the past decade and let his wanderings take him to Brussels, where he now lives an expatriate life as musician, puppeteer, archer, collage-ist, and, one assumes, much else. Zicmuse recently took a trip back to his home country to revisit long-forgotten places and to see for himself the changes that have taken place in his absence. The result is Passé Composé Futur Conditionnel, a sprawling record that refracts the American experience through layers of re-interpretation, trying to find a lost motherland, less as a physical place than as a feeling.
There are a lot of those feelings to dig though in Passé, though; at 50 tracks long, this album is stuffed with music, and the heightened inspiration Zicmuse seems to have received during his American journey is infectious. Surrounded by a top-shelf band of Belgian musicians — plus assists from spiritually-aligned collaborators Deerhoof’s John Dieterich and A Hawk And A Hacksaw’s Heather Trost — Le Ton Mité charges through an avalanche of American genres, with pieces of jazz, country, roots rock, 90s indie rock, exotica, R&B, and tejano crashing together over Mité’s wall of horns, woodwinds, and every other instrument in the music shop. Aside from its crazy-ambition, Passé also strives to be witty, clever, and cosmopolitan in the way that maybe only somebody who has chosen to become European can be; throughout its length, Zicmuse attempts to keep it buoyant with his good humor, which comes across about as colorful and playful as the paper collage that graces the record’s cover.
Passé Composé Futur Conditionnel will be available February 17 from Crammed Discs, who are releasing the album as part of their fabled world music imprint Made To Measure. But in the meantime, you can stream the album in its 35-track entirety right here. (The band has also released a delightful video for album track “Space Needle,” which you can watch here, if you still have time to kill after those 35 tracks):
Passé Composé Futur Conditionnel tracklist:
01. Décalage Horaire
02. Oude Dworp
03. Cantina Mexicana
04. L’Orage Qui Nous Accueille
05. Class War
06. La Danse Carré
07. Did Pharoah Saunders Ever Come Back?
08. Sources Chaudes
09. Petit Jean
10. Anse De Liberté
11. Encounter Group (Ultimately We March!)
12. Petit Bis
13. Hooch Wine
14. Buffalo
15. Eureka!
16. Gaspillage
17. 5’ = 45’
18. Indépendance
19. Paysages Éphémères
20. Al-BBQ-uerque Pizza
21. Antonio
22. Mystery Trail
23. Tamale Claus
24. El Camino Real
25. Un Litre De Salsa
26. Dans L’Ombre De Georgia O’Keefe
27. Holy Dirt
28. Space Needle
29. A Dog
30. Retour À La Double Cime
31. Olympia By Bus
32. Donne Moi Une Heure Dans Un Lac
33. Ghost Buildings Of A Past Life
34. Butoh Dancers
35. …
More about: Le Ton Mité
