Émile Parisien, now 40 years of age, has assembled an impressive discography on ACT that can be calibrated on a scale from ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’, ‘Excellent’ to ‘Brilliant’. If 2017’s Sfumato Live in Marciac was ‘Brilliant’, 2022’s Louise ' Excellent', then Les Métanuits would be the click on the dial half way between ‘Good’ and ‘Very Good’. Described enigmatically on the album cover as ‘Inspired by György Ligeti’s String Quartet No 1,” which in turn was inspired by Béla Bartók’s Third and Fourth quartets and described by fellow Hungarian composer György Kurtág as ‘Bartok’s Seventh String Quartet’, it all makes for an interesting avant garde mélange.

Ligeti’s Quartet No. 1, Métamorphoses nocturnes, is in 17 movements, but Parisien and Negro slim this down to 11 on Les Métanuits. What they present are adaptations and interpretations of Ligeti’s work – for example, on ‘Allegro grazioso,’ there is a lot of pitch sliding by the strings that is not replicated by Parisien. From an artistic standpoint the integrity of Parisien and Negro’s interpretations are beyond reproach. From the end user’s perspective it is an album of virtuous boredom, which on reaching the final track is rather similar to having undergone a spiritual detox.