[Hartchef Discos]

Guillaume Coutu Dumont has been lurking in Montreal’s techno scene for a few years, working intimately with the Mutek festival and as part of the Egg, Chic Miniature and Luci projects. 2007, however, turned out to be the year the spotlight caught up to him, now using the somewhat confounding moniker Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts. His much buzzed about debut album, Face L’est (Musique Risquée), is somewhat stylistically tame when compared with his singles for Circus Company, Oslo, and this fine slab of vinyl on Hartchef Discos. One trait that carries across all Dumont’s work is organic instrumentation, and on the “My Main Man EP,” it truly sounds like a ragtag band of roving musicians playing their hearts out with Canadian crooner Patrick Watson sitting in.

On the title track, Dumont shows off his song-writing skills, complete with sly lyrics that roll off Watson’s lax lips and a hugely memorable chorus. Favoring attitude over accuracy, “My Main Man” is bumpy in a way that affects a sweaty candor in listeners drawn in by punchy, unpolished horn stabs, 808 bass rolls, Watson’s faded velvet pipes and a swinging beat. The tune owes a lot to Watson’s seasoned-beyond-his years delivery and the careful post-production assembly of his falsetto, inserted like blasts of sunshine in an already bright song sure to please across the genre lines.

The “Flying Filter Edit” is better for mixing purposes but feels hollowed out and heavily processed next to the raw original. Watson’s vocals and horn bits are snipped and looped over popping bass hits, perhaps purposefully leaving things off beat to maintain a haphazard connection with its source material. “Unisex” is similarly structured, concocted with odd slices of hi-hat, female soul bursts, organ and bouncy tom percussion, calling to mind old house edits with relaxed, heavy-lidded vibes. Though I enjoy a fair amount of Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts records, the “My Main Man EP” is by far my favorite, as it displays the depth of Dumont’s strengths and features my favorite of his tunes. Highly, highly recommended.