"It can be no easy task to open a festival but Strasbourg four-piece Auditive Connection rose to the occasion with a confident, visceral performance that was as engaging as it was unpredictable. Cellist Anil Eraslan and guitarist Gregory Dargent forged punchy unison riffs and coruscating individual lines over drummer Frédéric Guérin's muscular pop-rock rhythms and vocalist Jeanne Barbieri's idiosyncratic vocal stylings.

On the opener "Monsters" Auditive Connection's music gravitated between King Crimson-like grunge and leaner indie-rock, and although both elements raised their heads from time to time during the set the music was a constantly unfolding mystery. Barbieri's seemingly Latin-sounding liturgy gave way to her invented language vocalisations on "Tantra," a riff-heavy number that included light-hearted shouting, caterwauling and collective Monty Python-esque semaphore. The goalposts were moved again on the episodic "Tra La La" which moved eerily through the gears from neo-classical to psychedelic and noirish universes.

More left-field still, were "Tao Po"—where Barbieri's meditative interpretation of Samuel Beckett's "Texts for Nothing" was bookended by a fierce punk-rock aesthetic—and the brooding closing number, which featured text by Jack Kerouac and—in keeping with the obscure paths Auditive Connection's music went down—a drum solo featuring a towel." AllAboutJazz, Ian Patterson