The tracks that make up Fragments of Soaring Vessels are conceived as “sensitive vehicles.” Although they seem quite different at first listen, closer listening reveals multiple points of intersection—often overlapping, sometimes paradoxical. The Inexpressible Feeling of Dereliction approaches an attempt at a sonic transposition of a feeling of emptiness and rupture that may arise in an extreme situation, in which a pious person is confronted with a moment of absolute disillusionment regarding their faith and retrospective devotion. I tried to imagine and render this complex feeling. Interlope is rather a kind of “hybrid” discussion (are we in the presence of machines, animals, insects?), between several synthesizers—some shrieking, others singing—each with different “sensibilities” that are slightly comical, capricious, mischievous, and naïve. Antic Moth translates into a telescoping between an initial desire to create something contemplative and spiritual, and a very real situation involving an invasion of moth larvae on a beautiful Persian carpet. Their relentless return rendered my attempts to save the carpet futile. Stress and a completely obsessive mindset collide and parasitize, from within, the need for and the search for serenity.
Melamboreas is the central and cornerstone piece of the project. It was created at the Maison de la Radio in May 2024, in a multiphonic version for the GRM Acousmonium. It is also a pivot, a keystone between past and present, between constructed, preserved, and forgotten memories. Melamboreas is the ancient Greek term for ‘black wind’, which is known as Mistral, a wind blowing in the south of France. Beyond any anecdotal character, the beginning of this piece is both an exploration of opposites and the symbolism of departure. It is therefore a question of establishing what this could symbolise: a displacement, a disturbance, an erasure, an erosion, a renewal. Composed as an ‘organised chaos', it follows a methodical and relentless evolution. Through a mixture of raw materials, scraps, digital processing and electronic sounds, the piece plays with our representations and perceptions, ultimately taking us to the heart of static matter trapped in suspended time, within a trajectory that is both nonchalant and irrevocable.
Ulysses’ Last Journey is a bonus track, somewhat apart from the rest, yet echoing it in its own way. It is a tribute to a faithful companion, to whom this piece is dedicated, composed and recorded in the immediate aftermath of his departure. In concrete terms, this album was created using field recordings made in the Calanques of Marseille, along with recordings of water heaters, radiators, cutlery and shards of glass mixed together in glass and metal bowls; using a multitude of modular and hybrid synthesisers, effects pedals and plug-ins; from bass, piano, theremin, guitars, vocals and hackbrett; from glitches, errors, doubts, discoveries, diversions, transformations, chimeras, inspirations, glimmers, shadows, instincts and other joyful, serendipitous coincidences.
