People have occasionally imagined that aliens were sending us benevolent beings as ambassadors, individuals who were naturally determined to shake us out of stagnation. In other fictions, aliens send cohorts of bleak brutes with orders to enslave us. Notwithstanding, we have always granted these emissaries a superior intellect. The two intergalactic secret agents portrayed in this piece are complete idiots. What are they doing on Earth? They are gathering absurd intelligence, insignificant bits of melodies. They grab all sorts of knick-knacks that they string together into necklaces and tie to their boots, and so adorned they go to unlikely places: barns, gambling rooms. And there, in the middle of an out-of-topic conversation, they inexplicably go into a trance or fall asleep. This fable is not as “Gaia-centric” as it seems: in the end, the good news is that we’re not the only race in the cosmos whose security forces consist of slow-witted individuals…

— Dominique Bassal [English translation: François Couture, iii-14]

Broto et sa z’complice was realized in 7.1 in 2013 at the composer’s studio in Montréal and premiered on December 5, 2013 during the concert Électrochoc 3 in the Studio multimédia of the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal (Québec).

Premiere

• December 5, 2013, Électrochoc 2013-14: Électrochoc 3: Dominique Bassal, Studio multimédia — Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, Montréal (Québec)