Ghislain Poirier — Conflits
Conflits is Poirier’s third full-length. Not only a musician, he also is a painter, and he drew the very nice artwork himself.
What we have here is a very interesting mix of off-kilter hiphop beats with various instruments (toys, traditional, glockenspiels…) and some laptop wizardry. There is some rapping on three tracks. If I had to compare Poirier’s music to someone else’s, it would have to be to a hugely talented albeit still very little known musician: O.N.O from Japanese hiphop crew Tha Blue Herb. Both TBH and ONO should be familiar names to those who read m[m] on a regular basis. Although’s ONO’s solo record is a little more dense and quite darker, both musicians like chaotic beats, broken structures and odd or unusual, string instruments.
Rupture is an excellent instrumental track with all-over-the-place beats, and a nice delayed and droney melody line. Next is Ou je voulais aller, on which Poirier raps. I’m not really into is texts. Being a French speaker, I understand what he is saying, and although the topics he is dealing with are interesting and important, he doesn’t manage to treat them in a way that would do them favour. A bit stereotypical, but less clichéd than most MTV raps, that’s for sure… The beats are a little more straight forward, sounding like some sort of sonic spring, if it makes any sense. And still those broken melodies and string (guitar) parts in the background. Terrorisme alimentaire might very well be the meeting of DJ Krush and Fennesz. I think it says enough and should get you interested. Up next is Plus gros qu’énorme, another rapped track. I really don’t like the lyrics, but it won’t be of much importance to most people. The track reminds me of TTC (French crew signed on Big Dada), with the syncopated but addictive and almost cartoon-like beats. Resister is funny in a way… I mean, whenever I hear the beats, I expect Missy Elliott to turn up and rap a little. It really sounds like a track lost by Timbaland during the most recent recording sessions. Les maladies, les medicaments leaves hiphop territories to explore electronica, and focuses especially on a mixture of laptop treated sounds and real instruments, not unlike Gel:. Don’t know if Poirier could make an interesting full-length with that kind of stuff, but this track is nice enough. Les retombees is a beautiful track, very quiet, with a regular beat and very nice processed melodies. A moment of quietness…
Conflits is a very nice album, a unusual mix of hiphop and laptopism. With Tha Blue Herb, Poirier belongs to a non-US trend that is ready to blossom and give to the discerning listener his fair share of great music.