De Temps Antan
Album: Ce Monde Ici-Bas
Label: L-Abe
Tracks: 11
Website: http://detempsantan.qc.ca

Fatea is known to have a Cajun threshold, i.e. that whilst a number of the reviewing team quite like Cajun, they don't like too much. In the vinyl days this tended to equate to one side of an album at a time, twenty off minutes great, forty too much.

"Ce Monde Ici-Bas" seems to be a bit of an exception, but that may because De Temps Antan, are actually a Quebecois band, rather than hailing from Louisiana and whilst the root of the music went south and became Cajun, the source of the music stayed in Canada and remained closer to its own folk roots and to this listener's ear a greater variety in the way the tunes have been put together.

Similarly the songs on the album, as opposed to the tunes, sort of gain a Celtic thread to fit into the more Gaelic core, further diversifying the sound of the album and breaking the rhythmic patterns, I don't suppose having the album reviewed on Eurostar on the way back from a brief sojourn to Paris has done De Temps Antan any harm either.

A final addition to the dynamic of "Ce Monde Ici-Bas" is the addition of Jorane to the three core musicians of Eric Beaudry, Andre Brunet and Pierre-Luc Dupris also gives a female vocal for the guys voices to work around on a couple of songs and again to stop the harmonies from sounding too familiar by the end of the album.

Ultimately, I guess, what I'm trying to say is that if your exposure to traditional music with a French flavour is via Cajun, there's a lot on this album for you, but you'll also find yourself being drawn into new territory with "Ce Monde Ici-Bas". If, on the other hand, you come from that Quebecois route, you may find an album that is consistently more up-tempo than you may be used to. Either way you'll find an album that takes you with it from beginning to end in a single serving.

Neil King