Art Is Simple Fnac Exclusive White Vinyl

Description

Après having brilliantly explored the territories of English pop-song with « Brexit Music », doublely won jazz victories with the festive pianoforte group, or shared the adventure with the very poetic Arthur Teboul, Baptiste Trotignon makes his big discographic return with his 25th album, « Art Is Simple », where he asserts an imagination imbued with serenity and elegance. With a totally original repertoire, with no covers and entirely composed and created by the pianist, we find there this eclecticism that has become his musical signature over the years, but also a sense of travel that takes us into a more cinematic and meditative sound universe than usual, moving away for a while from the paths of jazz and improvisation. A real turning point in his creative journey.
« I have always had a complex relationship with simplicity. Art is simple … After several albums in recent years around reprises/covers, I had the desire to write a lot of music, and I had fun setting myself this rule: 1h max of time to compose each track. That makes it possible not to scatter oneself, and not to succumb to the temptation to load the language too much, and above all to remain in my intuition, to welcome the idea that arrives with confidence and to stick to it! To arrive at something simple but not simplistic, refined and readable, to try to remain elegant but not « poor in spirit » for all that… that is a challenge. To accompany this idea I wanted there to be less improvisation than usual: the atmosphere is very peaceful, relax, often quite floating in fact, there is quite a bit of slowness in the colors…. To use terms from classical music the energy is clearly more « andante » than « agitato ». There is also more production on « Art is simple », what is called « post-prod » in jargon, that is to say how we work over the pieces once they have been recorded to mix, restructure, arrange the music, as is customary in other musics but quite rarely in jazz. In terms of inspirations there are in this album many musics that are NOT in this box « learned musics »: song, folk or pop music, but also everything that comes from nu-soul today … All these musics also tend to a form of simplicity most of the time and so inevitably there are a few touches of these musics in « Art is simple ». I am not certain that the artist must absolutely engage socially etc… But I deeply believe that the simple fact of having chosen to be an artist IS already a commitment in itself. Somewhere « Art is simple », it is also very modestly my way of participating and of personally responding to this question of the contemporary world as it is evolving today. This world which is anyway in the process of becoming very confused, too complex I believe, too loaded with too much information… and perhaps trying to protect oneself a little from all that, to oppose a form of resistance to it, and to try to find a safe SHELTER if one does not want to get lost, while trying to lighten a few little things! » Baptiste Trotignon, 2026