A strangely agitated garden sculpted from melody, dissonance and instrumental abberation through profound technique and unusual approaches to their instrument, by French double bassist Louis-Michel Marion and pianist Françoise Toullec, bringing a sense of wonder and turbulent environment through a shared passion balancing ominous space with astute activity.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2021 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at CCAM-Scene Nationale Vandoeuvre, on January 2th, 1021
"When two tightrope walkers go a long way together, we know in advance that the trip will also be, for them as for us, a different adventure. Pianist Françoise Toullec and double bassist Louis-Michel Marion have temporarily left their Banquise to enter a strange, rather enigmatic garden, which we discover step by step and which turns out to be delightful from start to finish. There is no rope or owl, only a good dose of mystery. That of this compromise - somewhere between composition and improvisation - so dear to a musician whose quests can sometimes require going beyond the usual eighty-eight keys of her instrument.
The etymology of the word "apocalyptic" tells us that it is about lifting the veil. So close your eyes, then open them slowly, because your full attention is required. Let yourself be carried away in an undefined space with nocturnal colors, between anxiety and serenity, where silence is sometimes required. Time ticks away slowly, following a willingly dissonant wandering that could never end. If the music is often melody and harmony, the one that is played on the side of this Apocalyptic Garden is of a completely different nature. It is a conversation of sounds, echoes and noises, of notes that escape like ephemeral bubbles, of friction or plucking of strings, those of the piano like those of the double bass; it is imagination; it is an exchange of glances; it suggests other directions. Is it vegetable? Animal? Who knows, it's up to you to search in the interstices of this secret place, with uncertain contours, to guess the nature of the invisible creatures that we meet there by imagining them more than by seeing them... Above all, trust these two guides can't wait to get on board with them. There is a shared curiosity and passion in their exchange, no doubt driven by the desire to go elsewhere to see if we would not all be better off there than in our material world. But it is also their deep being that is expressed in direct connection with ours, carried by the generosity that we have known about them for a long time.
Recorded in January 2021 at the CCAM-Scène Nationale in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, Apocalyptic Garden looks like a bewitchment ceremony. It is also an invitation to find ourselves, to get closer, after all these months when the other was too often singled out as a potential enemy. The apocalypse according to Françoise Toullec and Louis-Michel Marion, essential as we have understood, is good for today, let it be said..."-Citizen Jazz (translated by Google)