Fantômes

Description

Fantômes speaks of what connects us. What is the mechanism of the void that surrounds the living? How do we decide to fill it, what relationship do we have with it, individually or collectively? Does this void divide us or, on the contrary, unite us? It’s all a matter of choice and sharing. Music is invisible; the flute is merely a bit of breath that resonates. - - Fantômes is 14 stories, to save this world. - - Jî Drû, a distinctive flutist, a fiery bandleader for Tribe From The Ashes, Push up! and Jî Mob, a producer and arranger, an inspired sideman, today releases a second album under his name, refined, expressive, and dreamlike: FANTÔMES. - - ‘Music is invisible; the flute is merely a bit of breath that resonates. I questioned our relationship with what we cannot see, particularly with Ghosts, in a logic that would be that of a musical dream. In recent years, everything has collapsed: our intellectual and societal references, our spaces for sharing and meeting have been completely disrupted and sometimes even disappeared, our references have been displaced or erased, the Ghosts then remind the living, or rather the living remind the Ghosts. We can thus establish many parallels with music and more broadly with creation, which uses invisible references to guide the listener, to tell stories (sounds, scales, textures, structure, nuances…) All of this, of course, if we believe in Ghosts… because Ghosts, like the sound of the flute, do not exist, or they simply serve to poetically inhabit this world.’ - - Jî Drû's Fantômes shines with its coherence, its polished and meticulous production, as well as the quality of its cast; it is a major record, a jazz manifesto infused with blues, classical music, and repetitive, tribal, or electronic sounds. The hypnotic Rhodes of Pierre-François Blanchard, the enchanting textures and voices of Sandra Nkaké, the inventive rhythms of Mathieu Penot, the poetic appearance of Mike Ladd, and the beautiful string arrangements accompany the swirling flutes and the singing of Jî Drû. Each piece is the essence of a moment, and together they create a timeless atmosphere where acoustic and wooden sounds rub against electric ones. Jî Drû creates a dreamlike world, made of small stories of Ghosts; he carves a path somewhere between Portico Quartet, Cinematic Orchestra, and Mélanie de Biasio, that of a modern and refined jazz that weaves stories that make us resonate. An essential and enchanting record, full of poetry and revolt, a grand musical journey, mystical, dreamlike, tribal, and organic, for a quartet that we will not stop talking about.