Based in Paris, Benoît Delbecq, one the most innovative pianists and composers to have emerged in the '90s, has forged a personal style from jazz, ambient, contemporary classical, and non-western musics. His playing on prepared piano and keyboards reveals fugitive harmonies and a rich palette of colors and phrasings. Polyphonic rhythmic-melodic 'fabrics', consisting of timbrally distinct groove-layers proceeding simultaneously at different speeds, suggest balafon, sanza, pygmy polyphony, gamelan, or John Cage.

His international quintet (François Houle, clarinet; Michael Moore, reeds; Jean-Jacques Avenel, bass, and Steve Argüelles, drums and electronics) adds live electronic processing. Using a sampler, Argüelles may at any point isolate and loop or filter musical elements that have just been played, triggering what Delbecq calls 'memory whispers playing with the listener' - playing too with the other performers and thereby affecting the subsequent trajectory of the piece.

Delbecq writes specifically for his performers and for the group dynamic. The composed material is intended to provoke an 'improvisational orchestral complicity' to collectively create 'harmolodic echoes of living micro-forms', a music that seems to grow organically yet also has the shape-shifting quality of a waking dream. For Delbecq this music 'evokes a metaphorical vision of traditional central African fabric crafts, seemingly regular weavings thus animated with mysterious mutations.'

Track Listing

• Strange loop
• Poursuite
• µ-turn
• A lack of dreams
• Polders
• Within the mean time
• Ntshaks
• Bogolan

Additional Details

Label: Songlines

Genre: Jazz

Run Time: 49 mins

Release Date: 02/15/00

UPC: 774355152928