Montreal bandleader, composer, and trombone madman Claude St-Jean's high-spirited brass band L'Orkestre des Pas Perdus are usually a compact sextet featuring St-Jean's 'bone along with two saxophones, trumpet, and a tight rhythm section of sousaphone and drums (with some of the multi-instrumental bandmembers adding additional colors with flute, piccolo, clarinet, flügelhorn, and more). But as the title of 2007's Projet 9 suggests, the group has expanded to a nonet here, with four instead of two saxophonists (adding Marc Villiard on alto as well as tenor man and flutist Pierre Labbé from St-Jean's other band, Les Projectionnistes) and Bruno Blouin-Robert on cor Français. The rest of the sextet -- drummer Rémi Leclerc, soprano saxophonist/clarinetist Jean-Denis Levasseur, saxophonist Roberto Murray (here featured exclusively on baritone), sousaphonist Jean Sabourin, trumpeter Maxime St-Pierre, and St-Jean -- remains intact, a finely honed unit with over a decade's worth of experience pumping out the bandleader's high-energy tunes, as heard on OPP classic CDs like 2004's Mondo Cuivro and 1998's Maison Douce Maison. St-Jean has always been an ingenious writer for this ensemble, employing tight multi-layered riffing and counterpoint over those insistent, danceable rhythms, and often making OPP sound bigger than they really are. Well, here OPP are bigger, so if the sextet sounded like a nonet, the nonet seems more like a 12tet, but just as sharp and focused as ever. Right out of the gate on the opening La Belle Affaire, OPP swing like crazy, brass and reed accents crisp and punchy behind multiple soloists rising together out of the mix in fine New Orleans classic jazz fashion, but with the type of internationalist flair one has come to expect from OPP, untethered to a narrowly defined style or specific geographical location. A more complicated offering, Justine Borgne begins with a brief drummerless intro for flute, horn, and reeds leading into a series of interludes with sometimes knotty rhythms and surprising compositional twists and turns, steadily rising in energy and tightening up until an abrupt finish.

1		La Belle Affaire
2		Justice Borgne
3		Pièce à Conviction
4		Chameau #5
5		Deus Ex Machina
6		Gastro Funk
7		Art Piège
8		Panorama
9		Dos D'âne
10		Mécanique Populaire
11		Couvre-Feu

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