Thomas Bangalter, Mythologies (I was wrong)
It was Thomas Bangalter himself who chose, for his first ballet music, to deploy it as a work for orchestra, without any dross to weaken its subject. Angelin Preljocaj, who ordered it from him for Mythologies (2022), had naturally thought of half of Daft Punk for a hybrid composition, in line with the soundtrack of Tron: Legacy. Out of a taste for challenge, or because he sensed that symphonic music would be more suited to his desire as a musician, the Frenchman preferred the tangent. And what a tangent.
Spread over nearly ninety minutes, Mythologies testifies to what is much more than the whim of a pop superstar who would pride himself on great music to tell himself that he is a great musician. The cover, which reproduces that of a disc of baroque music right down to its weft, certainly depicted the hubris that can push a musician of popular music to embark on composition, and the orchestration of 23 movements of symphonic music, with all that this hubris endows with social aspirations. But the record stands from one end to the other, consistent with the scale of his gesture, even in the way he fantasizes and extends the tradition. Far from the neoclassical lukewarm water that invades Spotify, Mythologies catches and projects into a hall of mirrors whose only organizer, between Stravinsky and Glass, would be the passer Nadia Boulanger. Playful, ignorant of contemporary currents, this postmodern music allows itself all Mahlerian inflections, emphasis (Thalestris), mozartian pathos (the Gorgons), Vivaldian water games (Swirls), same great French variety on no two whose arrangements evoke those of François Rauber for the Marquises the Brel.
The only disappointment in the end would be the impression of distance that this music poses between us and its author. A way of telling us, at the moment of dropping the robot mask, that he is not about to pour out his inner torments far and wide… But now that you think about it, that’s not new : the music of Thomas Bangalter, with or without Daft Punk, has always drawn an open-air mystery of him. Olivier Lamm
Yaeji, With A Hammer (XL/Beggars)
With his thin voice, Yaeji sings Ready or Not, inspired by the popular tune that English-speaking toddlers sing while playing hide and seek. From childhood, the American producer of Korean origin borrows a slight discomfort way spooky movie, a seemingly innocuous pop but which, in an adequate setting, gives off more shivers than a blockbuster. His first album, With A Hammer, is a bit like that. Defeat of the k-house label bringing together all the Korean artists who know how to press a key of synth, freed from the hyperpop trend (another fashionable holdall), she prefers to paint her anxieties in pieces rejecting the club culture which made him known, cutting up his voice with an axe, planting heavy silences, without surplus. A fair and sinuous album, which advocates delicacy. Brice Micket
winterzuko, Winntermania (Promises)
It takes Winnterzuko’s skill to make a perfect song out of an old scab scooped out of a slimy corner of a dumpster – with, as the scab, I am muzik, electro hit parody performed by the character of Chris Prolls in Fatal, a comedy by Mickaël Youn released in 2009 and whose decisive dramatic spring was poop. Here, the rapper transmutes the joke into a moment of extreme melancholy, a masterfully incongruous piece that closes an album at the forefront of current rap. Winntermania is a parallel universe that looks like a realistic video game, full of flashes of sadness (“24 years old, neurotic like the daronne / I wake up, I eat GMOs from Danone”), where one is not ashamed to show his cheeks wet with tears rather than strike a pose. Marie Klock
Thomas Adès, Dante (Nonesuch)
We liked the Thomas Adès, devilish Ligetien, by Living Toys ; that, epic and lyrical, of the violin concerto Concentric Paths ; then that, mystical, of Polaris with its dodecaphonic song of brass, in cannon of diminution, on a bed of iridescent textures, pulsating in Sibelius. recent sound Concerto pour piano was, alas, less inspired but this is however nothing compared to what Dante, commissioned by the Royal London Opera Ballet, engraved by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. This heartbreaking stylistic zapping will however make it possible to torture novices after a dinner. They will then ask, panicked: «C’est Mahler ? Stravinsky ? Richard Strauss ? Offenbach ?» And you will invariably answer: “No no, look again.” Eric Dahan
Dwarfs of East Agouza, High Tide In The Lowlands (Under Pink)
We don’t quite know what this title refers to (“high tide on the lowlands”), but it is certain that this music made up of flows and eddies is a source of “capsized moments”, to quote the hall of Montreuil that this trio has been treading since 2016. So here is the hitch again in Seine-Saint-Denis, in Pantin, with a new record. Two sides, two improvised swerves, captured in the heart of the matter (at the Ateliers Clauss in Brussels) which oscillate between the magnetic trances of krautrock, the oblique inclinations towards avant-jazz and the esoteric reminiscences of an Arab bazaar. All in all, a good summary of the three men behind this project which takes its name from the district of Cairo where the adventure began: Alan Bishop, explosive guitarist and haughty violist researcher of sounds (Sublime Frequencies, it’s also him), Sam Shalabi, guitarist with curly strings, and Maurice Louca, with strange layers of keyboards and beats with wobbly shapes. Jacques Denis
Tzusing, Green Hat (PAN)
A radical version of synth-pop, particularly suited to the backrooms of SM clubs and intensive military training, electronic body music (EBM), like all currents relating to the pure formula, has never found its second wind. Determined for almost ten years to take the genre towards new complications and new aesthetics, by mixing it in particular with gqom (raw and minimalist house from South Africa), the Malaysian Tzusing finally succeeds, after a handful of tries too harsh and rigid, on the mind-blowing Green Hat. Crushing second album, which sounds like the music of an imaginary thriller in a phantom metropolis erected in the heart of the jungle, between maddening chases (Filial Endure Ruthless) and maximum oppression (Idol Baggage). Today Jimmy Batista
Staran Wake, Staran Wake (Hands in the Dark)
The British musician and producer Tom Relleen, sadly deceased in 2020 at the age of 42, bassist of The Oscillation and half of the duo Tomaga or even of Papivores, has not yet finished entrusting to our ears his melodies of ritual, analog, psychic tensions. -repetitive. Proof of this are his collaboration with Marta Salogni (we come back to it) or this very beautiful semi-posthumous instrumental album and collaboration over four years, entitled Staran Wake (both the record and the duo) this time alongside composer Andrew Bunsell. In short, a strange distended dimension of eight tracks where one would never cease to be delicately tossed about by esoteric rhythms in tactile impulses, an album which one would use well to wander through the night, without a lamp post, without a torch and a few evil spirits to only companions. Jeremy Piette