After In Paris: Time Cycle

After in Paris + guests Paolo Fresu & Dave Liebman

The group After in Paris can be quite single minded. On their first disc in 2004, bearing the eponymous title and published under Jean-Jacques Pussiau's label Night Bird, Claire Michael, Jean-Michel Vallet and Patrick Chartol had dedicated a track to David Lynch. This already revealed an attraction for a certain type of moviemaking, mysterious, phantasmagoric and strange. This time, with « Time cycle » the whole album is placed under the sign of cinema. 51 minutes exactly, almost the 52 minutes which define a documentary. The comparison stops there. This is by no means an encyclopedia of movie music. Our three accomplices - Claire (saxophones, voice, flute, programing), Jean-Michel (piano), Fender Rhodes (keyboards, programing), Patrick (bass percussion, keyboards and programing) - adopt a totally subjective vision. With their friends Paolo Fresu and Dave Liebman they project their hypnotic, mysterious and fantastical universe. In a fluctuating electro-acoustic environment, the brasses create suspense, the voice (Claire) introduces strangeness. We are elsewhere; there where colours mix (the blue notes of jazz, the black tones of thriller movies and the white nights). « Short Cuts », one of the 13 original compositions performed, could have been chosen as title for the album. Indeed, the reference to director Robert Altman and to short story writer, Raymond Carver, seems to impose itself for this musical puzzle. Each of the titles fits in to this picture. The music is in tune with the voice or rather with the voices. The spoken extracts from films (Shadows by John Cassavetes, The Maltese Falcon by John Huston, Citizen Kane by Orson Welles) or from radio drama broadcasts (War of the Worlds equally by Welles, CBS Radio Mystery Theater) match the notes. We remember the comminatory sentence of an author: "Don't set my verse to music". There is no risk of misuse with After in Paris. It is « within » the scenario.

Price: $13.98

In stock
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