If the genre isn’t immediately familiar to you, maybe you
haven’t caught its Albuquerque ambassadors Le Chat
Lunatique. You should.
We’ll spell it out for you. Le (luh) Chat (shot) Lunatique
(loo-nah-TEEK). Sorta Francaise for “crazy cat.” That part
was inspired by a Beware Of Attack Cat sign spotted on a
French garden gate by LCL guitarist/vocalist John
Sandlin. Of course the name also evokes ghosts of Django
Reinhardt, Stephane Grapelli and that whole magical hot
jazz scene of Paree. The quartet’s sound does it far, far
FAR better!
Besides John Sandlin, Muni Kulasinghe (fiddle/vocals),
Jared Putnam (bass/vocals) and Fernando Garavito
(drums) call Le Chat home, and what they call “filthy,
mangy jazz” manages to draw, from the haunted corners of
New Mexico, quite the Bohemian crowd. Well, their New
Mexico counterparts...Nob o’Hillians! Actually that’s a
humor point worthy of Jared, the band’s e-press agent. He
issues “le schedule of le band” written with le Chat-load of
puns. He is almost surely responsible for naming Le Chat’s
new supposedly surreptitious live recording “Puss In
Bootleg!”
Beyond Jared’s “influences” on the band, some mighty
interesting musicians and styles enter into play. Everything
from Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Cage and the Hot Club
Of Paris in Muni’s case to Frank Zappa, High Noon (?),
Stuff Smith and Hank Williamses One & Three but
definitely not Two in Jared’s. You will hear far more in Le
Chat than that, and they’re beginning to be heard
everywhere that’s hip...or maybe the hip starts showing
when they get there. On the night we’re watching (and
watching is nearly as good as listening), Jared is fretting
during the break over the chance the crowd may be
hearing muddy sound due to poor room acoustics, as
opposed to “filthy mangy” but pristine jazz. The
crowd...every Retro, Goth, Jazzbo and Belly Dancer (yes,
you read right) of ‘em...seems perfectly happy.
To see if anyone is paying attention, the guys begin the
second set by (sort of) playing each other’s instruments.
Truly mangy. It gets applause anyway. They switch around
and pull the switch, getting down to the serious business of
wonderfully dangerous playing. The gentlemen of Le Chat
Lunatique are in an instinctive sync that some in the crowd
may never get, but everybody gets close enough to make it
happen in the room. There even comes a frantic
Klezmer/Jazz piece, and you’d have to see the mutant
jitterbug they do to this one to believe it! More delightful
shockers roll out including a “House Of The Rising Sun”
that hangs the moon with deep Blues and high Reggae!
But these are jazzmonauts who are used to spacewalking
and still being in Mission Control.
Check out Le Chat Lunatique’s website, schedule and
samples on MySpace.com. Since they’re now streaming
some of their music, as Jared might say “it’s Le Chat heard
‘round the world!” Glad we didn’t say that...
By Rick Huff
OPENMIC NEW MEXICO V.1, #1 SEPTEMBER 2006
