Laurent Estoppey

This is the first of the fifteen records pressed inside Christian Marclay's 2015 exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, a show built around glass, bottles and the debris of a night out. Its centrepiece, the video installation Pub Crawl, finds music in empty glasses and cans left on East London streets. Marclay invited improvisers and composers to play in the galleries every weekend, in concerts free and open to the public. The Vinyl Factory recorded, cut and pressed each set on site with its mobile VF Press, and Coriander Studio screen-printed his sleeves. The series opened with the Swiss saxophonist Laurent Estoppey. His piece takes the show's material as its title: Vers Verres, a play on the French word for glass.

Estoppey divides his time between Switzerland and the United States. He plays in orchestras and chamber groups, premieres pieces written for him and works in free improvisation, while composing for concerts, installations, video art and documentaries. He names minimalism and spectralism among his sources, alongside hip-hop and electronic music. He is also artistic director of the Swiss ensemble baBel, which has performed Marclay's Screen Play, The Bell & the Glass, Shuffle and Graffiti Composition in Switzerland and Italy. The invitation came out of that long working relationship. Recorded on 31 January 2015, Vers Verres is scored for saxophones, glasses and electronics. It unfolds in two parts, one per side, the second lasting just under nineteen minutes. The line-up puts reed and breath next to the ringing and scraping of glass, with electronics extending both. It reads as a direct response to the bottles, glasses and cans Marclay had placed on the gallery walls and screens. Daniel Halford engineered the session and Flo Kaufmann cut the lacquer in the gallery, with the runout grooves hand-dated. In 2024 Marclay and White Cube gave the whole series of fifteen records to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which lists this one as the first session.

Black vinyl LP, hand pressed on The Vinyl Factory Press, in a sleeve with artwork by Christian Marclay screen-printed by Coriander Studio, with a silkscreened A-side label. Limited edition of 500 copies.