Carbon Bands:

 
Ada le O
Andy Gilmore
Asthmatic
Autumn in Halifax
Chad Oliveiri
Crush the Junta
Deciduous vs Conifer
Entente Cordiale
Finkbeiner
Hilkka
Hinkley
Joe+N
John Charlton
Kelli Shay Hicks
Nōh
Pengo
SHED
Sheet
SQ
Transcendental Manship Highway
Tumul
Tuurd

Entente Cordiale

Stats:

Birth: July 14, 2003
Members: Joe Tunis, Will Veeder, Chris Reeg, Otto Hauser (2003-2005)

Contact:

entente@carbonrecords.com
website: Entente Cordiale website

Bio:

n 1: an informal alliance between countries [syn: entente]
n2: a friendly understanding between political powers [syn: entente]
n3. an agreement between two or more governments or powers for cooperative action or policy: "the economic entente between the Soviet Union and western Europe" (Robert W. Tucker).
n4. the parties to such an agreement.
n5. a fluid collection of string oriented players, creating drones, textures and a collective secular trance.

Releases (9):

Past Shows (10):

Media:



Related Reviews (8):

Foxy Digitalis
RELEASE: the recognition of common interests
Entente Cordiale is a three-piece unit whose work revolves mainly around string drone. “The Recognition of Common Interests” is their third full length offering, as well as there most accomplished and satisfying work to date. Starting off with “an understanding is met” the trio create a wonderful space that merges pure simple melodic beauty with dissonance in such an elegant manner that one almost always wants to begin the album over again as soon as the track comes to completion with its final trails of drifting smoke.

When one is finally placated enough, for the time being, with the strange beauty of the first track and decides to move onward, one is greeted with a complex array of deep drones, heavy slow-ass riffs, odd repeated and shifting noises, and enough space augmented with the correct use of silence to keep the air filled with an almost uncomfortable and engaging tension. This music of Entente Cordiale is complex and deeply satisfying on many levels. These three players are really expert at creating and manipulating sounds and their interaction with one another displays that they really no how to listen to one another as well. 9/10 - Cory Card

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: 1904
This single-track, 23 minute disc contains some excellent, gluey, guitar-based improvised drones that sort of bridge the gap between Earth 2 and the celestial sludgy krautrock of SKULLFLOWER's Orange Canyon Mind, with thick rumbling feedback dripping slowly over swells of repetitious chords and peals of strangled guitar strings. ENTENTE CORDIALE rarely employ any actual melodies in this recording, but those that do appear, surface only momentarily before they are dragged back down beneath the mighty amplifier hum. The Rochester, NY based group uses 3 guitars and an army of distortion pedals to erect 1904, and it's a solid monument of amp worship along the lines of early EARTH, VIBRACATHEDRRAL ORCHESTRA, FULCI, and SKULLFLOWER. The unmarked disc is packaged in a minimal but nice looking cardstock wallet in a resealable plastic sleeve.

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: 100 yrs
More formless, heavy amp-drone jams from the Rochester-based group Entente Cordiale. 100 yrs is made up of two long, untitled tracks...the first features a gradually building storm of shambling free-guitar-noise, lots of mangled, howling feedback, and loud vibratory drones emitting from the amplifiers. The second track works up some great, shimmery feedback textures into almost My Bloody Valentine style blobs of wobbly, melodic pink noise before lumbering into a crushing horizontal dirge with two drummers pounding away under waves of amplifier chant. I love it when formless guitar noise and feedback rock creeps into that sugary territory between mid-90's Skullflower and MBV's Loveless, and this track delivers. Loud, lo-fi, melted drone-rock with three guitars that draws from the whole amp sludge/Skullflower/Earth 2 legacy...I can never get enough of this stuff. 34 minutes of pure guitar damage. Comes packaged in a heavy watercolor paper sleeve with blue and silver artwork screenprinted onto it.

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: the recognition of common interests
Rochester free-rockers Entente Cordiale return with their first "real" CD after a couple of CD-R releases that were well received over here at Crucial Blast HQ. Exploring themes of alliance and collaboration, Entente Cordiale (named after a historical agreement created between the English and the French at the dawn of the 20th century) craft a nearly 50-minute jam that while broken up into seperate tracks, seems to flow together as one huge organic piece. At first, this feels like the quieter side of members Joe Tunis and Chris Reeg, whose other band Crush The Junta just came out with a hefty new CD-R of improvised free-rock sludge that buried me beneath a heavy blanket of distorted goop. Here they are joined by Will Veeder (also of Hinkley, Torpedoes, and Muler), and the first track, "An UNderstanding Is Met", is a fragile, drifting tangle of folky guitar strum and clanging pipe chimes, almost like the Dead C lazily playing on the backporch of some country farm, idyllic and folky and dreamy. But when the second track "Roots" emerges, the guitars take on a darker hue, the strings suddenly detuning and coiling up like serpents, scraping fretboard growls sliding across the neck of the guitars, fluttering heavy synthesizer electronics buzzing ominously beneath Entente Cordiale's deformed blues licks and buzzing amplifiers. The following tracks continue in a similiar vein, sparse guitar lines repeated ad infinitum over buzzing synths and droning melodica, distorted mangled riffage clawing it's way through clouds of thick feedback, quietly pretty passages of amp hum and simple strummed chords, occasionally dipping into pools of Earth-y guitar rumble and raucous skree. It's the last five minutes of the album, however, on the last track "How Long Can It Hold", where the band cuts loose and whips up a scorching tempest of noisy guitar racket and reverberating speaker float. While not as "heavy" as their previous CD-Rs, The Recognition Of Common Interests still occupies that hazy realm between Iversen/Bjerga's trippy guitar-based improv, The Dead C at their most formless, and occasionally, the deep rumble of Earth's 2. Simple but effective packaging in a heavy mylar sleeve that holds the disc in a professionally printed card sleeve.

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: the curse of abraham
Just found out about this new trio from Rochester, NY, which includes Joe Tunis somewhere in it's lineup. When the fuck does this guy sleep? In addition to running the massive avant-noise label and mailorder Carbon, doing one-day tours where he performs short, fast sets of his solo experimental electronics at various locations around Rochester, collaborating with a million different artists, and playing in the amp-cranking free-rock unit Entente Cordiale, Tunis apparently also operates this killer group alongside Dennis Mariano (also of TIger Cried Beef and Hungness) and Chris Reeg (Blood And Bone Orchestra, The Years). Reeg and Tunis are actually both in Entente Cordiale, and that group's hazy, droning noise rock improv is sort of the starting point for what Crush The Junta are doing. But this outfit however definitely gets more raucous, combining formless guitar riffs and feedback, meandering basslines a la The Dead C and likeminded rock deconstructionists, electronic textures, synths, and freeform percussive splat into waves of amorphous rock action that crest with loud and burly bursts of psychedelic sludgery that come close at times to Grey Daturas-levels of sonic muscle. The Curse Of Abraham is one of the group's first recorded works, a document of two live tracks that each toe the twenty-minute mark, and which run the gamut between brooding, pummeling krautrock workouts, spidery meandering math rock jams, and punishing metallic sludge dripping with woozy, detuned guitars and howling screams. One of the heaviest releases from Carbon to date - keep it up, Joe! I'm looking forward to hearing more from this band. The spraypainted disc comes packaged in a hefty, hand-assembled chip-board envelope similiar to that Pengo disc we carried last year, with full color artwork glued to the front and splattered in dual-color paint, with a color insert.

Modisti
RELEASE: 1904
[ Entente Cordiale - 1904 CDR ]
A collective approach to the development of extended drone textures created by means of electric guitars. Featuring a dense flow of pulsating, transparent veils, the superimposition of overtones and processed fabrics creates a complex dome of continuous noise. The vault’s nerves become increasingly close, layers getting thicker, their continuous character contributing to add to the density of the whole although the careful process of addition unfolds according to a calculated plan. The immediate reminiscences of the materials –such as harshness and protest- are here counterbalanced by the extreme subtlety with which the sounds are handled. More importantly, they subtly hint at the fragility beneath the complex veil of abstract noise, which simultaneously states an almost trance-like recurrence of rhythmic statements of collective celebration/cry.

Foxy Digitalis
RELEASE: 1904
1904. 100 years ago. I can't imagine anyone back then thought the advancements in music technology that have happened in that time would have ever been possible. Entente Cordiale are another new addition to the fantastic Carbon imprint. This short release contains only one track that clocks in at just under 23 minutes. From what I can tell, there is nothing here other than two, distorted, improvised guitar tracks. It's simple, but there is still a lot happening. There are some other minimal effects as well like reverb (and possibly some subtle tremolo), but they aren't very important. What makes this release good is how the guitars play off each other so well. Because of this, the track is dense, sucking in all the sounds of the space in which it was recorded. Each takes its turn at the forefront as well. While one will play something more melodic, perhaps higher on the fretboard, the other will continue laying down thick layers of distorted goop below. Keeping this low-end constant allows the track to sound more full. I feel like this is one, really short moment stretched into 20 minutes. It unfolds so slow that, at times, it feels like it's not unfolding at all. It's like you're just sitting there having your ear drums massaged by sound. Like I said, it's simple, but in that simplicity is something quite beautiful. As a short debut, Entente Cordiale definitely have my attention. I can't wait to see where they go next. - Brad Rose

Volcanic Tongue
RELEASE: i don't think the dirt belongs to the grass
Massive, genre-defining 3xCD set packaged in a DVD case with full-colour artwork and full colour card stock insert housed in a natural-colour cotton bag with single-colour ink stamp art/logo and featuring exclusive tracks from a gob-stopping selection of underground players orbiting the Carbon universe. Limited to 500 copies. Tracks from: Aaron Rosenblum, Andy Gilmore, Anla Courtis, Antony Milton, Asthmatic, Autumn In Halifax, Blood and Bone Orchestra, Blood Stereo, Carlos Giffoni, Carpentry, Caustic Solution, Chad Oliveiri, Chris Reeg, Cock ESP, Coffee, Craig Colorusso, Crawlspace, Crush The Junta, The Davenport Family, Dead Machines, Entente Cordiale, Foot and Mouth Disease, G55, Gastric Female Reflex, Heathen Prayers, Hilkka, Hinkley, Howard Stelzer, Irene Moon, Joe+N, John Charlton, Justice Yeldman, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Lunt, Mike Shiflet, Nancy Garcia, Neil Campbell, Pengo, Phroq, Pumice, Rainbeaux, Sindre Bjerga, Sindre Bjerga/Jan-M Iversen, Sq, Taiwan Deth, Taurpis Tula, The Body, The North Sea, Thurston Moore and Tinnitustimulus. Highly recommended.