Die frühen Filme von Claude Chabrol waren für manchen Manafonisten aufregender Teenager-TV-Stoff. Die bröckelnden Fassaden der grossbürgerlichen Welt, die Abgründe des Mondänen, reihenweise Mörder und fatale Damen. Die „Nouvelle Vague“ hatte viele Gesichter. Die Musik ist mir gar nicht mehr in Erinnerung.“ (m.e.)
„Ran Blake grew up devoted to jazz, gospel music, Bartók, Debussy and film noir, became a key figure in the jazz/classical Third Stream movement, and has been making his own perceptively independent music ever since. Film noir and the French new-wave director Claude Chabrol fuel this album of flinty, eerie or austerely romantic short pieces, with Ricky Ford on occasional sax, and one operatically ghostly vocal. The wistful Cemetery is a typical Blake blend of delicate treble sketches and and hard-clanged chords, Bells of Doom and The Nights of Tremolat are among several spooky tracks referencing Chabrol composer Pierre Janssen. Ford mixes purrs and atonal smears on a wild account of Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge, is smoky and then squalling over Blake’s blithe departures on Max Roach’s Garvey’s Ghost. It’s unmistakeably jazz, but of a robustly non-generic character.“ (John Fordham, The Guardian)