Joakim

For the French Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Xavier Veilhan built Studio Venezia, a working recording studio inside an enveloping sculpture of wood and fabric. The installation drew on Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau and ran from May to November, curated by Christian Marclay and Lionel Bovier. Musicians recorded there in front of visitors, among them Brian Eno and Sébastien Tellier. Joakim, the New York based composer and producer, took part in May 2017. The Studio Venezia Sessions is the album that came out of his residency, released by The Vinyl Factory in June 2018.

Joakim chose not to arrive with drafts. He asked random visitors to give him a word, a letter between A and G and a tempo, and sometimes to pick the instruments. Using a transcription table of his own, he turned each word into a chord, then improvised on those chords, scales and tempi. The titles keep the trace of the method, as in Orange (Katie, USA) or Arms (Ralf, Germany). The pavilion held rare instruments, from medieval horns to Baschet crystals, a Buchla and a clavinet. Sessions ran from 15 to 19 May 2017, recorded by a team led by Thibaut Javoy with Nigel Godrich's vintage mobile studio. Joakim mixed the album in New York that September. VF points to Cluster behind Trust and Air, alongside modal jazz of the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese minimalism and drone. The record also marks his return to his training as a classical pianist. He improvises at the piano on Arms, Air and Dream, on Fender Rhodes in Trust and on harpsichord in Absence. The room stays audible throughout, with the floor creaking and visitors talking or coughing, as the label notes. VF also compares the approach to that of Conny Plank and other krautrock producers, who used the studio itself as an instrument.

This VF edition is a double LP on 180-gram vinyl in a gatefold sleeve whose inner panel lists the instruments track by track. It has printed inner sleeves, liner notes by Dan Fox and artwork by Studio Pensom, in an edition of 500 copies.