THE MOOD FOR LOVE (vinyl)

Description

After 2022's *Le plus longtemps possible*, which earned them a "Coup de coeur" from the Académie Charles Cros as well as the title of "Group of the Year" according to the editorial teams of *Jazz News* and *Jazz Magazine*, the four musicians of Flash Pig have chosen a love story infused with imagination as the central theme for their new album: *In the Mood for Love*, director Wong Kar Wai's masterpiece. Flash Pig finds a perfect vehicle in the film's soundtrack, which, in addition to the lovers' theme and its variations, features several Nat King Cole boleros and traditional Chinese songs. As with Wong Kar Wai, formal constraints allow the band a modest and distanced expression of emotion. The unspoken words, fleeting touches, and nostalgia of this ephemeral story permeate the album. However, where Wong Kar Wai never relinquishes his strict aesthetic control, Flash Pig continues the work begun on their previous albums, where letting go, active listening, and risk-taking are fundamental. A certain wildness, humor, and embodiment, which the film does not reveal, infiltrate their treatment of this soundtrack—which could otherwise flirt with kitsch. This fiery yet controlled album, the quartet's fifth in fifteen years of existence, allows us to appreciate musicians who have reached maturity together, capable, like few others, of expressing complex and nuanced emotions with a jazz idiom. The dialogue with cinema opens up exhilarating possibilities for our imagination, pushing this valuable group for French and European jazz even further.