«N°5»
De Christina Vantzou (Kranky)
We already knew that electronic music was particularly floating and freed from its obligations towards genres and their uses in recent years. Ambient which is danced, concrete music in the cellars, techno which flows in the bedroom… The phenomenon, with the air of a large decentralized centrifuge (no artist or any local scene can claim to have launched hostilities), further accelerated since the shutdown during the pandemic; but let’s confess our particular admiration for the fabulous freedom of the American of Greek origin Christina Vantzou, whose new disc, N°5, knocked down a few more “Danger!” signs. on the edge of the desert to take the music to formless and elusive pangs, on the borders of the sublime and of strong and terribly concentrated emotions. Vantzou, a woman of sounds and images whose name we spotted at the time when she composed half of the duo The Dead Texan, says she had the impression, by collecting the very scattered materials that were to compose the eleven pieces , to be reborn and to work, with N°5like his very first.
The storytelling provided by the artist says that she was on Syros in the Aegean Sea when she experienced a “moment of lucidity” (Joyce would have spoken of epiphany); we are grateful to the ouzo or the Mediterranean sun for having hit him on the head, but the fact is that Memory of Future Melody or Red Eel Dream are among the most bizarre and powerfully phantasmagoric sonic ramblings to emerge from the dense avant-garde electronic output of recent years. Of course, we identify that Vantzou has typical neoclassical reflexes (Dance Rehearsal, Kimona I), which Vangelis counted for her (Reclining Figures), that she is a child of the mystical minimalism of Pärt and John Surman. But nothing except an overflowing imagination can explain these ghostly orchestral dissonances, this atmosphere on the edge of a precipice, between sea and cave, this feeling of perpetual drowning carried by the synthetic sounds of Gerald Donald (Doppler effect) as much as the baroque soprano Lieselot De Wilde. For a previous record, Christina Vantzou used the word “fragrance” to designate one of her own compositions and it is perhaps in this confusion of meaning, between smell (“N°5 de Vantzou”) and hearing, that we must seek to describe in our turn the sensations procured by this nebulous and exceptional disc, the best of its author and composer, and one of the most singular to be able, all the same, to be placed in the overflowing “music” bin background». Olivier Lamm
«…If I Die, I Die»
Des Virgin Prunes (BMG)
Irish from Dublin, the Virgin Prunes were the musical antithesis of U2 in the early 80s. other than The Edge’s own brother. This first album released in 1982, produced by Colin Newman (Wire), remains a monument of sticky gothic, radioactive post-punk at the PIL, coupled with the Brechtian cabaret as it was then rediscovered via Bowie and the Dutch Meccano. This reissue celebrating 40 years of a sonic trauma never dispelled, accompanied by a second CD of rarities, remixes and singles from the same period (including their “hit” Pagan Lovesong in three services), surprises by the always intense explosive vivacity of these indomitable songs. The same cannot be said of those of U2. Christophe Conte
«Moffou»
By Salif Keïta (Universal)
Twenty years since this CD came out: the perfect opportunity to provide a new vinyl version of what was a rebirth for the Malian singer, who reborrows the acoustic voice from it, after years of wandering in the synthetic meanders of the so-called worldmusic. And for all that Moffou, named after a flute made from a stalk of millet, and his studio which he then built along the Niger River, did not give up, far from it, on experiments. It was in another studio, that of the Seine, in Paris, that the foundations of this future classic were laid, before the sound engineer Jean Lamoot took on the task of adding subtle touches of other layers, without erasing what makes the class of this return to tradition, synonymous with a return to grace for Salif Keïta, like the duet with Cesaria Evora which opens the album: Yamorewith accordion, cavaquinho and so on, produces the same effect in 2022, just like the twirl Madan, which was remixed with a vengeance. Jacques Denis
“The influence”
By Mylène Farmer (Sony)
How many listeners will go crazy then Farmer fans with Right of way ? That’s the nagging question about this fundamentally divergent record, a morbid new-age pop dance rock blockbuster (no longer reborn) whose summits are inevitably the highest perched, those devoid of rhythms, completed in the laboratory. We do not question the work or the investment (the expensive Woodkid produces), even less the momentum, which will not fail to color the cheeks of the fans who adore it and that we love to adore it. But we notice that this infinitely fine crest between teenage childishness and cosmic mysteries of the purest strangeness extends without renewing itself, and the glaring absence of openness, legitimate at the end of a career such as that of the indestructible Farmer, whose falsetto is more youthful than ever, but who knowingly ranks with the seniors who write their new songs with the feeling that they are closer to the end of their career than the beginning. “How beautiful the dawn is for funereal reasons”she sings, touching, and we believe her. O.L.
«The Complete Warner Classics Edition»
Walter Gieseking (Warner)
You know the Gaspard of the night, by Ravel, engraved by Walter Gieseking? No one has done better. And his Debussys with their infinite moires, of an unreal fluidity and drive? His spouting and grandiose Schumann, his Bach which traces, his Rachmaninoff No. 2, stretched like a bow, neither sentimental nor grandiloquent? And his Mozarts radiating naturalness and simplicity? Well, asserting in 1937, in front of Arthur Rubinstein, that Hitler was going to save Germany was not smart. The fact remains that, if he continued to play during the war, the pianist, born in Lyon, would not have been a member of the Nazi party or an anti-Semite. Buying the box set of 48 CDs retracing his career, from the first 78s to the last LPs, and offering nine unreleased tracks, is therefore less immoral than listening to Wagner, Karajan, or worse: Karajan directing Wagner. Eric Dahan
«Asmara»
De Hermon Mehari (Comos)
In December 2021, two albums thought up by Hermon Mehari during confinement were mentioned. Here is the trumpeter from Kansas City, permanent resident in Paris, for a collection that opens a new chapter in his career. Jazz, he does not make a clean sweep, but uses it to dig into his family roots, the Eritrea that his parents fled in 1979, furtively invoked in Change For The Dreamlike. Not to reinvest the traditional field, but to inspire him with a repertoire that transfigures local melodies and rhythms as he reads his exile journey. Not without inviting the singer Faytinga into her quartet, promised to a bright future in 2000 before engaging in the war of independence, the time of two compositions: Tanafaqitsetting in Abyssinian mode of the trumpeter where his high-pitched voice has lost none of its superb, and Milobea lullaby she recorded and which Mehari managed to place in conclusion. J. Den.
“Polnareff sings Polnareff”
By Michel Polnareff (Parlophone)
No more electrified than that at the approach of a best-of replayed in piano-voice – no doubt dealed to launch the machine with his new label, his new team and his next tour – we took …Sing Polnareff like what it objectively is: a cutting-edge techno prototype of the studio record. Because if he is “metaphorically naked” (according to Apple Music), the singer is assisted by an armada of plug-ins and effects, which lend reinforcement to his playing, his instrument, modify and subtly support his voice (we suspect an autotune crutch on who killed grandma) and propel her in the hollow of the ear with a suction that undoubtedly equals that of Billie Eilish. Also, we recommend for once the Dolby Atmos device, which has above all resulted in transforming pop records into elusive mush but makes a beautiful setting for this real fake show before the real ones, on the stages of France and Navarre. O.L.