Mess with the West

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Western movies, particularly the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and his Italian contemporaries, have become iconic in the minds of film buffs, but those arresting images would possibly never have stuck without scores that matched or even surpassed them.

“Personally, I think this is the most effective music I’ve heard in cinema,” says Montreal musician Antoine Berthiaume, composer, band leader, guitarist and banjo-handler in Rodéoscopique. “You can’t take them apart—the movie serves the music at a certain point. Those movies became mythical because of the music. Take away the music and it’s just two sweating guys staring at each other in the desert.”

There are a number of acts about these days that pay direct homage to Ennio Morricone, whose scores are so emblematic of the Spaghetti Western genre. Rodéoscopique drift far from the flat-out tribute template. “It’s kind of a Morricone ambience, but it’s mainly taking his spirit with new compositions, rather than playing his stuff differently.

“He wasn’t the only inspiration, of course,” Berthiaume adds, in reference to the elements of traditional American Western scores, country & Western music, rootsy folk and solid jazz that inform Rodéoscopique’s self-titled debut disc. “So far, the best definition for it I’ve heard is ‘post-modern Western.’ I like that a lot.

“None of us are really jazz musicians, we’re all doing very different things,” Berthiaume says of a line-up including Bell Orchestre’s Stef Schneider, Magnolia’s Mélanie Auclair, Rouge Ciel’s Guido Del Fabbro, and active actuellistas Pierre-Yves Martel and Philippe Lauzier. The sextet’s pedigree is impressive, and their skills will be in full display, given Berthiaume’s intention to ratchet up even further, in the live setting, the improv element so central to Rodéoscopique. “We’re all Ambiances Magnétiques musicians, so we all have improvised-music backgrounds. We’re also a bunch of leaders, with our own bands. In a way, it’s really hard, six really strong heads, but that’s the way I wanted it, because everyone’s putting in a bit of their ideas. That’s the way I like it. I don’t think I’m really playing the role of leader. I want people to take the music and do what they want.”

AT LA SALA ROSSA ON FRIDAY,
APRIL 3, 8:30 P.M., $10