Vialka – La Poursuite de L'Excellence – VIA – via-008 - ***

Vialka are a French duo, comprising Marylise Frecheville on drums and vocals, and Eric Boros on guitars, who essay an environmentally friendly progressive rock in miniature.
Their seventh album finds the poly-rhythms, complex chord changes, and surges of mood usually associated with Seventies behemoths or hyrda-headed post-rock collectives leap forth in unusually lean and lithe form.
It's as if a pair of Pyrenean street performers had covered King Crimson's Red, in its entirety, in the Place de Ville, for loose change. Petit Mot epitomises Vialka's approach, audacious fluttering female vocals playing catch-up with rolling percussion and prize-fighting, punchy guitar stabs.

(20/2/11)