Hubbub

"’Hoop Whoop’ is one of the great free improv albums of 2003."
François Couture, All Music Guide

"Hubbub, the adventurous European improvisational collective, shatters genre barriers in this marvelous new session."
James D. Armstrong, Jr., Jazznow

"The music flows, builds and ebs. Pitches. Drones. Swatches of sound. Etheral and resonant. Not a single unnecessary note is played. A quintet using saxes, piano, amplified guitar, jaleika, percussion. Mostly the instruments remain recognizable, but work together to create the feel of one giant instrument. Timbres and attacks change across all of the instruments simultaneously, as a giant canvas reveals itself before your ears. A great recording."
Jeff Surak, Vital Weekly N° 295

"Probably one of the most fascinating aspects of this almost 55-minute slab of collective improvisation is that it was created almost exclusively on acoustic instruments... The Hubbubers prove that acoustic brouhaha can be just as convincing as the electric variety — if not more so — and have created a remarkable auditory soundscape with this disc."
Ken Waxman, Jazzweekly

"None of the instruments take the lead and there are no competitive outbursts, only a busy, complex hubbub of sounds and textures. The feeling here is that at any moment the hubbub is going to climax and erupt into a cathartic chaos, but it never happens. The players maintain an uncanny control over the direction of their improvisations; there’s so much to listen to here, it’s a wonder there are only five members in this collective. An intriguing record, and wonderfully executed."
Richard di Santo, Incursion

"One’s overall impression is, however, of the submission of individual egos to the greater aim of collective music-making. This is hugely successful, as it so often is in improvised music, and it feels rather odd, listening to this music, to refer to it was quintet improvisation at all. Improvisation it certainly is, and of an extremely good sort, ever-evolving but never feeling sketchy or out of ideas."
Richard Cochrane, Musings

"Simply put, this is music for late nights, darkened rooms and perhaps some rapt reading, but demands more involvement than mere "background music". No one player dominates, everyone plays judiciously. UB/ABU is unlikely likely win many converts to Euro-improv, but those who admire or crave a more "impressionist" or ambient approach to free-improvisation will likely enjoy this."
Mark Keresman, Jazzreview

"Hubbub is a project for long attention spans - the two pieces that make up this album last respectively 26 and 28 minutes, and each takes its time to unfold. Perraud’s use of bowed and scraped cymbals and Mariage’s atmospheric guitar thread in and out of the texture, while the saxophonists lay down long lines and follow them into music that perhaps has more in common with contemporary classical writing - especially the musique spectrale of Grisey and Murail - than it does with the hiccups and splatters of your "standard" improv sound."
Dan Warburton, Paristransatlantic

"The five-headed beast is well disciplined. Its music thrives, more organic and visceral than British free improvisation, without turning into an egocentric power blast. There is a lot happening, but a lot of listening too. The second a new idea emerges it is harnessed and guided in the same direction than whatever was already happening. That is the proof of a mature ensemble and this one groups some of the best players of the turn-of-the-century French improv scene. Strongly recommended."
Francois Couture, Allmusic