MAL/AIMÉ

An off-shoot of Ottawa art-rock band Pony Girl, mal/aimé has an experimental chamber sound combining clarinet, guitars, and percussion with synths, drones and electronics. Yolande Laroche’s soaring clarinet and voice weave in and out of guitarist Julien Dussault’s demented drone patterns, over top of a bed of synthesizers and electronic percussion created by Jeff Kingsbury.

Their immersive live set reacts with the audience and sounds in the room, and often features found noises and thematic vocal samples framed by the trio’s thoughtful ebb and flow. The listener is all but forced to close their eyes to be lost in the synergy of music, noise, and the ambient features of the performance space.

As a recording project, the group’s output focuses primarily on etudes that experiment with limited sources, opting for brevity over grandiosity, but without sacrificing size and width. The tracks are used as a bedrock for live experimentation, thematically present but not bound by structural rules outside of the room in which they’re played and the listening audience.