Label: Musique Risquee
Catalog#: RISQUE 015 CD
Format: CD, Album
Country: Canada
Released: November 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Tech House, Minimal

Musiquee Risquee is fast turning into the one of the best labels around and this album from Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts is further proof of that claim. The album is kicked off in fine style with 'Can't Cheat With Concrete', a heavy deep houser and then continues to explore deep, skippy minimal house in all it's forms. Getting a lot of love from Villalobos apparently and it's not hard to see why. CD version feature a couple more tracks than the vinyl pack too.

Classically trained as a percussionist, Montreal's Guillaume Coutu Dumont does a predictably good job with his beat programming on this full length for Mutek-related imprint Musique Risquee. After an odd electroacoustic vocal introduction, the album kicks off properly with 'Can't Cheat With Concrete', a classy ten-minute cut that features rich, textured production bolstering a subtly tuneful impulse and waves of Latin American-influenced drum sequencing. 'Domdom' is slightly more overt about its digital pedigree, with glitching electronics weaving a beat and CD-skipping sounds shaping a melody. Far from being an austere exercise in laptop chicanery though, Face A L'Est clearly has roots in far more conventional, classic house music, dabbling with a number of different styles. There are some jazzy sax phrases worked into 'Les Gans' which lends the mix a casual, loosened up quality, while 'Ze Blob' is more in keeping with the hipster minimal scene. Guillaume proves himself an eminently capable producer across a multitude of different styles and sub genres, but you will find the odd bum note here and there, notably the duff Tom Waits-styled techno spoken word of 'Fat Cat', which finishes the album off, possibly in more ways than one.