“Why make a new album? Because I don't know how to do anything else,” confides Fred Pallem. “If I could make six a year, I would.” This passion for music made by musicians finds its full expression on “X” (the tenth), conceived with an obstinate resistance to the urge to do less well, with fewer people. While Le Sacre du Tympan's career began more than two decades ago, this album asserts its distinctiveness with a perilous exercise: writing each track as a potential hit, where each instrument has its own theme, its own gimmick. - - Fred Pallem creates his tenth work alongside Le Sacre du Tympan. - - On the album, 25 musicians play brass, strings, and harpsichord… Among them are companions who have been with the big band since its very first album: Vincent Taeger on drums, Rémi Sciuto on saxophone, and Daniel Zimmermann on trombone. And then others who joined throughout Le Sacre's journey. All of them now play a significant role in Le Sacre's history and sound. - - Recorded in several stages, in the Paris region, with a string section finalized at the legendary Ferber studio, this tenth album is, according to its creator, “a little more than a new album.” It is the second part of a cycle begun with “L’odyssée” (2018), where all compositions are inspired by very personal events, where each solo is imbued with stories and emotions. - - “Goodbye Lougarock” – where Guillaume Magne’s stratocaster glitters – silently dedicated to Fred Pallem’s father, who passed away in January 2020, “Bitches en Marbella,” which in its own way evokes the liberation from successive lockdowns, or “L’Amour du Disque,” where the composer recounts his joy at writing his tenth album for Le Sacre. Far from being backward-looking, “X” above all recalls Le Sacre du Tympan's very current mission: to put great orchestral music back on the map, like a strange, impossible place where Wagnerian flights of fancy would cross paths with the groove of David Axelrod’s basslines and the madness of Jean-Claude Vannier. - - Without speaking of a passing of the torch, “X” is perhaps a sign that Fred Pallem and his acolytes have been writing the scores for a sample mine for more than two decades, where artists like Madlib or Danger Mouse could come and pick up bits of sun-baked groove and rhythmic joys. This is precisely what makes this tenth album “X” a more cheerful long-player than the previous one, and one to listen to like sunscreen for the ears, far from concepts.
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