Volume III

Description

Rooted in Quebec and inspired by the immensity of the St. Lawrence River, Flore Laurentienne's music—born from a harmonious marriage of strings and analog synthesizers—draws us into an inner journey to the sublime, where we discover ourselves to be both fragile and powerful, suspended between vulnerability and wonder. The message, the communicable, here, is light; it is the germ of a seed in the earth that becomes a plant then a flower, blossoming to its paroxysm then inevitably withering for the cycle to begin again; it is the quest for beauty in chaos, from which harmony is born to transcend it. On Volume III, Mathieu David Gagnon and his Flore Laurentienne return to celebrate the magnificence of the river and its floral and sylvan surroundings. Volume III also further explores the arrangements of acoustic and synthetic elements that characterize Flore Laurentienne. Unlike the first three albums, the majority of the pieces were able to be worked on with the band members during residencies and concerts before being recorded, which nurtured the compositions at a stage where they were still in motion. The band fuels the project and stimulates Gagnon's writing by advancing the project's sound, nurturing it, allowing it to go further. This new milestone also marks the end of a trilogy begun in 2019 with Volume 1 – with the inherent and parallel aspiration to reach a third volume to pay homage to Volume 3, the first album by L’Infonie (a Quebec collective cult that combined jazz, prog, classical music, and poetry, among others). The latter did not influence Flore Laurentienne's music per se, but rather its concept of freedom in composition, notably by combining classical and improvisation. The progression of Volume III is in phase with the evolution of the project: where the first piece "Fleurs" is close to what Volume II offered, "(À travers les) Chablis", in conclusion, shows us what the next step might look like. It is an album to be taken with its two predecessors while being open to the next stage. Flore Laurentienne is constantly evolving, but, from the beginning, the vision has been the same: to create living, true, human, and uncompromising music.