Léonore Boulanger: voice, harmonium, toy piano, casio SA-46, jew's harp, megaphone
Jean-Daniel Botta: voice, guitar, double bass, piano, music box, casio SA-46, balafon, trumpet
Laurent Sériès: percussions, toy piano, flute chinese hulusi, toy box

Singer Léonore Boulanger & multi-instrumentalist Jean-Daniel Botta are joined by percussionist Laurent Sériès to make music described by their label as ‘atomised French song, disfigured jazz, Kandinsky-esque primitive music in an ultra-violet hopscotch’. They are touring in support of their fifth album, Un lièvre était un très cher baiser (A Hare Was A Very Small Kiss) based around poems by ‘naive’ Austrian poet Ernst Herbeck, whose totem animal was a hare.

They return to Free Range after an extraordinary performance in 2019. Their previous album, Practice Chanter, was likened to ‘a mosaic, due to the sheer quantity and variety of sonic fragments that is somehow made to cohere in these 16 wild, wonderful tracks. Songs that are constantly alive and unpredictable’ (The Quietus)

Joining them on their UK tour is Glaswegian songwriter and bassist, Howie Reeve. Poised somewhere between the prog-rock outlandishness of Frank Zappa and the earthy avant-folk of Richard Dawson, Howie has been described as:

"A unique and singular figure in the current British underground … performing solo on acoustic bass guitar, delivering a fragmented and dexterous music that takes in post-punk, avant-folk "(Chris Joynes)

Links

Le Nouveau from the album Practice Chanter (2019) by Léonore Boulanger

Minuit from the album Feigen Feigen (2016) by Léonore Boulanger

Extract from Petites Planètes (2013) by Léonore Boulanger

Bloodlines (2019) by Howie Reeve

Double Rainbow (2019-2020) Howie Reeve with NoMeansNo guitarist Andy Kerr and French saxophonist Cathy Heyden