The first release from new record label Mnémosyne Records contains three microtonal pieces for string quartet by young Montreal based composers played by Quatuor Mémoire; Bailey Wantuch and Meggie Lacombe (violins), Marilou Lepage (viola) and Audréanne Filion (cello).

The first piece is by Florence M. Tremblay and is titled Insides.  It’s slightly under twelve minutes and uses a fairly wide range of sonorities without, I think, going into any of the weirder types of extended technique.  Most of what I was hearing hear were a drone like ground at varying pitch and volume on which more solid segments of both bowed and plucked notes were superimposed.  The dynamics are quite complex and one section even sounded weirdly like what you hear inside a plane when it’s taking off.  Plenty there to maintain interest across a fairly short piece.

Louis-Michel Tougas’ Quatuor à cordes no.2 is just a little bit longer.  There’s more extended technique here with (I think) bowing on the bridge (or some other means of producing scraping sounds) and striking the body of the instrument.  But these busier, more insistent sounds are only occasional visitors to a soundscape that’s basically quite gentle with extended quarter tones layered over each other and a real sense of a conversation between the instruments.  It’s surprising lyrical.

The most substantial piece is Olivier St-Pierre’s Chronos, Kaïros et Aiôn which gives its name to the album.  This piece is over thirty minutes long and simultaneously explores the three concepts of time mentioned in the title.  Chronos; objective, immutable, and cyclical time, Kairos; the time of opportunity, and Aion; the time of eternity, inspire gestural figures which interact in complex ways and reoccur in different combinations against a generally drone-like backdrop.  There’s lots of extended technique and sharp changes in dynamics.  It feels quite sparse in texture with often only one or two instruments playing.  I can see why the composer needed this long to explore some pretty complex ideas but whether the average listener will be able listen actively for so long is, I think, questionable.

This has to be really difficult music to play so full credit to the young musicians of Quatuor Mémoire for performing it so skilfully on this, their debut album.  The recordings were made at  Église Saint-Alexandre, Québec in late 2024 and 2025.  Louis-Michel Tougas was responsible for recording, mixing and editing and the end result is a sonically impressive recording.  It’s being released as a physical CD and digitally in lossless 44.1kHz/24bit format and MP3.  The release date is December 12th but it’s available for pre-order on Bandcamp.

Catalogue information: Mnémosyne Records MN001