Toc, Jean-Luc Guionnet

For more than fifteen years, Toc – the Lille-based trio of Jérémie Ternoy (Fender Rhodes, Piano Bass), Ivann Cruz (guitar) and Peter Orins (drums) – has been pursuing a singular sonic quest where the energies of experimental rock, the unpredictability of improvised music, and a constant drive toward excess converge. On stage as on record, Toc invents a telluric and ever-shifting music, built from flows, ruptures, and accumulations, where hypnosis and chaos feed off one another.

For this new album, recorded live in March 2024, the group invited Jean-Luc Guionnet, a central figure in experimental and improvised music. Saxophonist, organist, composer, and visual artist, Guionnet has distinguished himself in a wide range of contexts – from the incandescent free jazz of Hubbub to in situ projects for Muzzix, alongside his electroacoustic explorations and radiophonic works. His approach, both physical and conceptual, consistently unsettles the act of listening, whether unleashing a storm of breath on the saxophone or probing the acoustic space of a venue.

The encounter between Toc and Guionnet acts as a catalyst. In Quelques idées d’un vert incolore dorment furieusement – a title borrowed from Noam Chomsky’s famous “impossible” sentence, here reimagined as an invitation to oxymoron and fertile absurdity – the musicians dive into an abrasive trance where every sonic gesture is at once provocation, construction, and collapse. Toc’s saturated guitars, roaring keyboards, and polymorphic drumming find in Guionnet’s jagged, elongated, or blazing breath a formidable ally, opening the space to a new intensity. An album of collisions and frictions, where four musicians explore the edges of a raw and incandescent sonic matter, balancing radical freedom with collective power.