(Loin Des) Rivages

Description

The latest album by Bon Voyage Organisation, La Course (2020), was released during the lockdown. The feedback from listeners, who received the music with particular attention, sparked the idea and need for (Loin des) Rivages, to emerge from confinement and reunite the musicians in the studio. Bon Voyage Organisation is primarily the story of building an ensemble, the quest for harmony through music, among individuals. This has been a central motif in Adrien Durand's composition and production work for nearly ten years. Freed from all constraints and affirming the radical choice, initiated with La Course, of entirely instrumental music, (Loin des) Rivages was recorded over five days in June 2020 at Studio Atlas by Jean-Benoît Dunkel (Air), and mixed the following summer by Adrien Durand in his Parisian studio, Bureau 12. It is a remarkable performance considering that all ten tracks were played entirely live, bringing together up to thirteen musicians in the same room. This close collaboration allowed Adrien Durand and the ensemble members to transcend themselves. Among other highlights, the incredible energy of "Sentier des Orpailleurs" (and the superb solo by Adrian Edeline), the depth of melancholy in the track "Apacheta" (co-written and co-arranged by Adrien Durand and Gustave Rudman), and the originality of the fusion in "Et s’éveillent"... Taking inspiration from the great explorers of the soul – Sun Ra, Moondog, Coltrane – whose cover of "Naïma" opens the album; Adrien Durand blends the earliest instruments of mankind (percussions and winds) with the latest (mixing tables and synthesizers) to embark on the most perilous of journeys: the inner voyage, (Loin des) Rivages, away from civilization and its norms, in this jungle of the soul that is wonderfully represented by Clément Vuillet's cover, at the heart of what some perceive as madness. You are therefore not facing an intellectual record but rather a spiritual endeavor, because, as Adrien Durand likes to repeat in concert, one must enter Music as one would a sanctuary.