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
NŨh
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 (11):

Media:




  • Title:2008_08_23_Day-Tour - Entente Cordiale
    Description: Entente Cordiale at Mendon Ponds, on the 9th Annual Joe+N Day-Tour, Rochester, NY on August 23, 2008
    Watch Full Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLvbSQIz168

  • Title:2008_08_23_Day-Tour - Entente Cordiale (part 2)
    Description: Entente Cordiale at Mendon Ponds, on the 9th Annual Joe+N Day-Tour, Rochester, NY on August 23, 2008
    Watch Full Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa6zGZV1vvE

Related Reviews (13):

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: lord of the trees
The experimental noise/drone scene that revolves around Rochester's Carbon Records has produced a very small but exciting crop of heavy free-rock groups like Stone Baby, Crush The Junta and Entente Cordiale, and I've become a pretty big fan of all of them. This little scene is as incestuous as these kinds of insular communities usually are, with just a handful of bands swapping members back and forth and forming into different permutations of one core sound, which in this case is a kind of burly, guitar-based brand of improvisational riff-ooze that takes the New Zealand free-rock sound of the Dead C and Gate and pumps it full of volume and testosterone and crushing distortion. Transcendental Manship Highway is the latest project to grow off of the Carbon/Rochester free-skuzz trunk, and it's pretty heavy stuff. Featuring members of Crush The Junta and Stone Baby, TMH go for the sludgy, improvised heaviosity shared with Crush The Junta, but the half-hour track that makes up this debut disc is much more free and trippy. Sprawling metallic sludge riffage goes off in twenty directions at once, the guitarists grinding away at thick droning powerchords over a battery of pouding, somewhat tribal sounding percussion. The riffage weaves its way through a dense fog of swirling feedback, black plumes of amplifier smoke and formless guitar solos that race skyward and send off fiery sparks and chunks of melody; halfway through the track, the music dissolves into this crushing wall of blackened amp drone teeming with extreme wah-pedal abuse and reverb and cymbal noise that stretches out for several minutes, until the band crashes back in, krautrock drums pulsing deep underneath the layers of delayed vocals and blackened shrieking and feedback. Formless and massive, feedback is the focus and TMH spit out monolithic gobs of the stuff across this set, and deliver a thunderous sludge-drone blast that sounds like the loudest sections of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless being blasted at full volume over another sound system spinning Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You can smell the amplifier smoke all over this. Even the disc itself, painted silver with a weird bubbling texture across it's surface, looks like it has been in the presence of a powerful heat source. The disc comes in a full color ardstock folder with nice wintery photography of frost-covered woodlands, which ties in nicely with the group's bleak, blasted tribal psych sludge

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: our lungs are bleeding, but we keep breathing
When it comes to delicate, beautifully constructed handmade CD-Rs of crazed improv-noise and droning, rumbling free-rock, the Carbon Records label out of Rochester is one of the coolest. We've been carrying their heavier titles for years and some of the more recent stuff that the label has been putting out (Entente Cordiale, Crush The Junta) has been really massive in a Dead C-on-steroids, buzzing amp-noise and spontaneous riff-mangle sort of way, and every one of these CDs and CD-Rs looks amazing. This split release is the latest from Carbon, a two-disc set that features a different 3" CD-R from the Rochester bands Entenete Cordiale and Stone Baby, and both of 'em deliver about twenty-some odd minutes of dark, shadowy free-sludge/psych/drone that hits the spot.
The first disc is from the mysterious Stone Baby, who I'd never heard of before picking this up, but who craft these really dark and creepy free-drone ambient scrapescapes. Their twenty minute disc features the three-part "Silicosis Suite", which begins with echoing plucked strings of some sort looped over what sounds like a violin being slowly played and a dark expanse of shimmering ambience and distant, pulsing tympani-like thuds. The piece slowly becomes more detailed as creepy distorted voices, warbling electronic melodies and heavy, Earth-esque dronemetal guitars begin to appear, the latter being a slow rumbling cloud of looped amp-crunch that hovers over everything like a toxic thundercloud. Things become heavier and darker as moaning choral voices and some really depressing violin melodies rise to the surface, and the distorted guitar textures swell in volume, sometimes forming into a murky droning riff. The third and final part of the suite drops the distorted guitars and has processed violin weeping over waves of blackened droning drift. Imagine a doped-up Tony Conrad playing with doom-psych basement trogs Robedoor and yer almost there.
Moving on to the Entente Cordiale disc, we get a single twenty two minute track called "96/89", an epic piece of dark free-drone-rock that starts off with softly rising swells of low-end feedback and a softly plucked melody, simple and pretty, played over and over. Droning bass notes and scraping guitar strings drift around as the playing slowly builds steam and the volume gradually rises, and as the melody and chords start to change, the sound moves from airy prettiness to darker shadows of buzzing bassy rumbling and droning strings that seem to slip in and out of tune. The sound melts and distends, turning sickly as all semblance of melody evaporates leaving only the nauseaous warbling feedback and atonal humming of guitar strings. But then it all transforms again in the last eight minutes when a simple tribal-type drumbeat enters and another melody appears, a basic, catchy indie rock hook on one of the guitars that kinda sounds like Sebadoh or something, played for a couple of minutes over the murky tom-tom beats and then swamped by waves of loud amplifier feedback and guitar noise. Definitely poppy by Entente Cordiale standards, but still in the vein of their dark Dead C brand of free-noise-rock jamming.
Amazing packaging as always...this set comes packaged in a brown kraft gift box with full color artwork glued to the front, the two mildly spray-painted discs enclosed inside with an insert card, and tied together with a thick piece of twine. Limited to 100 copies.

Crucial Blast
RELEASE: the disappeared
The Rochester, NY free-sludge trio Crush The Junta first came to my attention last year with their crusher of a debut, the Curse Of Abraham CDR on Carbon. Featuring members of Entente Cordiale, Blood And Bone Orchestra, SQ, Pengo, and Hilkka and taking huge open chord riffs and syrupy, slow moving tempos and using them as the foundation for extended improvised jams that are filled with heavily textured feedback and amplifier noise, Crush The Junta's sound fell somewhere in between the Grey Daturas and Gravitar at their most psychedelic and the austere slowcore of Codeine. Massive and expansive, the trio uses synthesizer and electronic drones along with their core drums/guitar/bass lineup, their music is almost entirely instrumental (save for the occasional howl of ecstasy rising up above the dirge), and their first 'real' CD release The Disappeared further expands upon their trippy metallic jamming. "The Mist Rolls In" opens the album with a series of thu nderous, distorted open chords and saw toothed drone, somewhat Western in feel, almost like a rougher version of the newer Earth stuff crossed with Codeine's Barely Real. But the following track "Skull Against Stone" shifts the album into the abstract, a loop of guitar noise spinning off above guitar noise and buzzing cables and an quasi-krautrock beat until it starts to sound like a riff from the The Who stuck on repeat. "Steps Of The Temple" is one of the only tracks to feature any sort of vocal accompaniment, a few lines of spoken word poetry delivered over slow, sludgy dirge riffing. The rest of the album explores similiar territory, huge blown out psych-sludge jams, thick amplifier drones, pretty indie rock tunes played at glacial tempo, all of it surrounded by a vague sense of political unrest and dystopia. Check 'em out if you're a fan of high energy, distortion laden improv/psych/dirge rock like Heavy Winged, Alasehir, and Grey Daturas. Packaged in a cardsto ck jacket that comes in a heavy plastic mylar sleeve.

Foxy Digitalis
RELEASE: life underground
I know that I’m not the only wholehearted advocate for Rochester, NY’s most excellent Carbon Records imprint, but I feel like there just isn’t enough love being broadcast throughout this worldwide ‘web’ of ours for this high-quality label. I can’t say enough how consistently these guys (guy, actually) issue quality recordings. Carbon Greatness Exhibit A: this latest double CD-R of guitar goodness from Entente Cordiale – a trio consisting of Chris Reeg, Will Veeder and Carbon boss man Joe Tunis. These guys specialize in slow-motion shredding and extended feedback wrangling. The two discs that comprise “Life Underground” demonstrate the two unique faces of the EC oeuvre. The first disc is a home studio recording, while the second disc documents a single live show from a few months prior to the studio session. Both discs amply serve as platforms for the group’s relaxed approach to improv, but each contains a unique cache of treasures befitting the specific recording environment.

In the studio, EC showcases their sense of balance: melody is played off of dissonance, and quietude begets commotion. On the first track, a short guitar line repeats ad infinitum underneath a slowly-building web of textured guitar noise. The second and third tracks are lengthy feedback-laden sludge feasts whose landscapes are littered with the debris of ruined guitars. The live disc is a demonstration of the drone-to-chaos aspect of the EC sound. What starts out as a manageable slow-burning ember of sound erupts into a frenzied blaze, with furious waves of feedback cast to and fro. A churning cascade of deep-end drone pierces the madness, reeling in any stray frequencies.

There is almost two hours of music on “Life Underground”, enough to satiate the hungriest of out-guitar fans. After this, do we need any more evidence that there is quality music coming from the bowels of post-industrial America? I think not, but I welcome it anyway. 9/10 - Byron Hayes

Ear Conditioned Nightmare
RELEASE: our lungs are bleeding, but we keep breathing
Rochester's Carbon Records have been dropping weirdness from the north for a while now, and this double 3" is a killer format for showing off two like-minded wranglers of mind-fuckery in a concise and effective format.

Stone Baby is a group that, I believe, includes Cory Card, though I'm not sure of or if there are any other members. The "Silicosis Suite" presented here in three parts, maintains the spooky, sterile vibes that both the track and the band name conjure. For those who don't know, a stone baby is the name given to some crazy process whereby a baby gets lodged in the wrong spot of a woman's body and essentially calcifies so as not to cause infection. Sometimes these things aren't found for forty years, which is definitely the kind of grueling, creepy, body invading spinal discomfort that Stone Baby bring to mind here. Really crisp metallic expanses here, with radio babble and guitar tinklings riding atop some deeply buried brain dead mumbles. Eventually the darkness overwhelms and you enter the howling monstrosity of the second movement, which manages to be as dense while still maintaining a kind of oxygenated undertow. The last movement culls more scraping metal with warped vocal bellows while guitar and endless echo trail along in gloomy desolation. Not exactly a finger snapper, which means a pretty complete realization of its own aesthetic.

Entente Cordiale is another mystery group who lead down a similar path as Stone Baby does. A trio consisting of (if I'm reading it right...) Chris Reeg, Will Veeder and Joe Tunis, it sounds like a three guitar attack going on, though the restraint would suggest otherwise. Patiently ringing melodic fragments and textural billows, about forty percent of the sound they wrangle is each others feedback meshing and melting inward. Despite the apparent chilliness of the disposition on "96/89," there is actually quite a lot of warmth in these subtle interactions. Sudden changes are few, but they build themselves a sort of tactile sound world to bathe about in. Sometimes it gets bleaker, sometimes more muddied, and sometimes it is quite harsh, but the overall approach is one that favors interaction and listening to mental degeneration via guitar splaying. Even so, some pretty fucked levels of weird are apparent.

Weird little package in one of those Michael's arts and crafts boxes with packaging fuzz and a nice pro-printed card. The twine (not pictured) really seals the deal on a wild split. - Henry Smith

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.