There's a certain madness that I think is necessary for embarking on big creative projects, at least when it's purely an act of passion with not professional motivation. And I think it took a fair bit of that madness for Stuffy Doll to sit down and decide that it would be a good idea to compose Le Ballet qui Saigne, a 35 track long ballet whose running time must be around two and a half hours. It was probably the same madness that led me to decide to listen to the whole thing and review it.
But I did listen to the whole thing and I do feel better for it. The narrative apparently involves "a troupe of friends who put on a show, get conscripted into an interplanetary war, and return home to deal with the aftermath of what that trauma did to them". I'm glad the descriptor is there because I'm not entirely sure I would have picked that up from the music alone, but it did contextualise some of the more interesting parts of the album.
For instance, Polished and Shaved, clearly takes place in the very early stages of the war. A heavy percussion part sits beneath a poem yelled over a megaphone, while the armies shout "WAR!" at the start of each line. It's a real high point of the album.
There's also the tracks Don Ye Now and its later reprise Doff Ye Now, which open with simple Chopsticks-esque piano parts before slowly building into something that are as militaristic as they are bittersweet. The latter track is slower, and deeper, and is a greater sense of loss there. It's such a neat pairing and do a lot to add to the narrative.
Another big highlight for me is Battlefield Blues, which starts out with a very basic piano part before layering on a bluesy melody and dramatic strings. It's one of the more dynamic tracks on the album, as the pace picks up and slows back down, and it's a very cool composition.
Still, this is a long album and it feels long. I really do applaud the ambition, and there's not a bad composition here. I would absolutely love to hear this played with live musicians, as I think the obviously sequenced piano and string parts can undermine what's going on a bit and make things feel a bit flat.
I would also just love to see something come of this production in general. I imagine getting a production like this off the ground, actually choreographing the dances, hiring a theatre and musicians, is very difficult and expensive! I think it would take a certain madness to try, but I feel Stuffy Doll might just have it in them.