Caravaggio
High-voltage music

Records 03.03.2021

Founded in 2004, Caravaggio is a group of four musicians from different backgrounds whose work lies at the crossroads of genres, between improvised music and sound research: an invigorating in-between that guarantees freedom, and a convergence of different sources - rock, jazz, electronic and contemporary music - that nourish each other without giving in to undifferentiated mixing. 

This fourth album Tempus fugit bears witness to this, with six new tracks that spin the metaphor of travel, with the relationship to image that Caravaggio likes to establish: auricular cinema in Jessica Hyde, where we are immediately immersed in a 3D space that maintains the ambiguity of the sources, instrumental and electronic.

The music is high-voltage, heightening suspense to the point of heartbreak. Recorded vocals and samples that take us into another universe also underpin the drama in My way, swinging between relentless rhythmic tension (inside) and open space (outside). Where do these superb low tones come from, Bruno Chevillon 's bass guitar perhaps... that surround the space of Windings roads? White noise, granulation and a texture in continual mutation capture the listener's attention, seduced by the sound recording and the quality of the mix. Vers la flamme, which evokes the cosmic visions of a Scriabin, invites guitarist Serge Teyssot-Gay, whose ethereal solo at the start is set against the caressing backdrop of Benjamin de La Fuente's violin. The polyphonic space that builds up in the second part is impressive, fusing sonorities right up to the final blaze.

The undulating figure of the electric guitar in 70 MM fascinates and obsesses, periodically mutating in the zone of saturated bass. Samuel Sighicelli 's keyboard samples, often off-screen, maintain the surprise and heterogeneity of the materials on which the entire piece is based. Travelling as a metaphor for the journey, with its images scrolling across the sound canvas, alerts us: barrel organ blowing, noisy sounds, melodic figures blurred under the action of morphing, sizzling, crackling ofEric Echampard's snare drum, so many finds that stimulate the imagination, always served by ideal sound recording and mastering quality. Talents federate and materials hybridize within a space built with as much invention as rigor. 

CD Tempus Fugit, Caravaggio: Benjamin de la Fuenteviolin and electric guitar ; Samuel Sighicellikeyboards and electronics; Bruno Chevillondouble bass and electric bass; Eric Echampardpercussion. CD éOle Records ; recorded at Besco Recording ; 49′.

Michèle Tosi

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