Synesthesia

Description

Composed and performed by Ronan Courty, this piece for solo double bass slows down the layers of time by invoking an invented age-old music, between imaginary folklore and early music. Acoustically produced, the violent and obsessive friction of the bow on the string gradually reveals washes of floating harmonics that extend the suspension of the moment while evoking a kind of electronically produced ambient; the illusion created by the emergence of sustained sounds is particularly effective in reverberant places (chapel, church, museum, forest, under a bridge, ... ) and makes this piece a contemplative and mineral moment. This relationship between acoustic and electronic is dissected on the record, where side B explores the parallel dimensions generated by side A, two facets very present in Ronan Courty’s work: “Playing Synesthesia is personally an intense and spiritually very precious moment for me because it is different from my usual instrumental vocabulary, less aestheticized, more raw and hypnotic.”