This is one intense listen. Et le Troisième Jour is the debut album from Vincent Dionne and Michel-Georges Brégent out of Quebec. They are truly a great discovery for me, I only wished I knew about this ages ago. One side one, they explore the more electronic side of things, with Brégent using the MiniMoog, Fender Rhodes electric piano, Farfisa Professional Duo organ, and Vako Orchestron. Choir and operatic female voice from Pauline Vaillancourt are also included, and I am just simply blown away by her presence on "Chant D'espoir" (by the way, the original LP does not divide this piece into two parts the way the CD version called Dionne-Brégent, which contains both their albums, does). "Résurrection" starts showing the avant garde side of things, lots of percussion from Dionne, while Brégent gives some strange ring tones, but then the electronic elements kick back in. Now comes side two. This one is a truly mindblowing experience. It has a rather sinister and scary vibe, in fact I remembered some website stating it rivals Univers Zero's Heresie for scariness factor. It starts off rather quite, gets really loud, then you get treated with church bells ringing. I have no idea what this super short "Choc" is all about, it's just a voice yelling "Choc" and the sound of one beat off a drum, then they go on to the next thing, which is some quite percussion, before things build up, but the synths kick in attempting to go back more to the electronic nature of the first half. Listening to this album, I wouldn't doubt in the least that Vincent Dionne was inspired by Harry Partch, as a lot of his percussion looked like it came out of a Harry Partch estate sale (Partch passed away in 1974), but that's probably unlikely. I doubt Harry Partch would have been flattered by the music of Dionne-Brégent had he lived (Partch had little use for synthesizers that were starting the hit the market the last few years of his life), but this music would give you sort of an idea how Partch's music might have ended up like had he been opened to the idea of synthesizers included.I have often wondered how stuff like this ends up on Capitol Records. My guess the label received so much unbelievable success with the sales of Beatles albums in North America (after all this was the label that released their albums in North America) that the label was willing to take chances at the time. Turns out CBC had broadcasted this duo performing material from this album live in 1977 (the year after it was released), and it's unbelievable how they pulled it off live, it didn't seem that there were any overdubbing, and definitely no "lip syncing", as you can tell it differs a bit from the studio original (Pauline Vaillancourt, for some reason, sings a bit lower here than on the studio version). So it looked like mainstream Quebec at least got to see them on television, but I'm sure many of them were scared off and probably took comfort with their Harmonium albums (I love Harmonium, by the way, this is a bit too early for Celine Dion, who I dread).Their next album Deux found them recording a much more approachable album, more in the prog rock vein (and Vincent Dionne using a conventional rock drum set along with his percussion), without the avant garde leanings, and I could imagine Deux selling a few more copies in Quebec than its predecessor. In my opinion it really comes down to taste, those who like electronic music on the avant garde side of things obviously should go with Et le Troisième Jour, and those more on the prog rock side of things need to try Deux. Personally I love them both equally, but I understand one might get more mileage off one over the other.

As far as I am concerned the two albums released by this duo are extremely well crafted, carry an air of spontaneity and best of all varied. Their debut has elements of a world music/classical and rock esp if your even the slightest bit familiar with javanese music on one of the tracks there is a 7 note motif with a repetitive mini-moog bass line and what sounds as a gamelan (metalic marimba of sorts) its downright hypnotic. The use the female vocalist adds another ethereal layer to the music and best of all she does not sing lyrics so her voice is purely used as an instrument. There is little real use of the standard drum kit and alot of bells/chimes and percussion. I relish the live feel to the album and one can just admire the chemistry these two musicians seen to have in the studio. Not really prog in the true sense but in my book progressive isnt a term that has an auto response of Yes/ELP/Genesis rather progressive means musicians willing to take their music into territories not yet explored by their piers. Taking the modern technology of their time i.e. 1970s analog synths, samplers(mellotron) and primitive percussion makes this one wonderfully spice laden journey where east meets west!!