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Joce Mienniel takes us on an inner journey to the land of dreams in this beautiful album. And not just any dream: it's his own dreams, patiently collected and recorded over the course of the night, that the flutist sets out to explore in a highly electric quartet with strong pop overtones.
From the outset, the two-part "Hopeless" sets the tone: the album oscillates between dreamy, soaring tracks, shrouded in ecstatic, reverberating piano, as you'd expect from such a title; and other stages in which the tone hardens, propelling the sleeper into the savage rhythmic gears of a relentless machine. As we know only too well, a dreamer's sleep is no picnic!
On "Two Tiny Black Eyes ", which is based on the same change of atmosphere, flutist Joce Mienniel also takes on the role of singer and player of the Korg MS20, the mythical synthesizer with the warm, powerful bass tones that have made the heyday of many aesthetics, from progressive rock to techno music, for a track with eighties synth pop colors. The musician, who also sings on several other tracks, refuses to shy away from any influence, and with this album, he unabashedly presents his emotional musical background as a sound CV. He joins forces with pianist and keyboardist Vincent Lafont, guitarist Maxime Delpierre and drummer Sébastien Brun, who often ignite the compositions with rock energy. Listening to an album like this, one can legitimately wonder why we should sometimes still try to classify music.
Joce MIENNIEL - THE DREAMER from Romain AL. on Vimeo.
Another example? Within the same three-part track, "Appartement 643", the initial airy flutes and piano disappear completely into a saturated, industrial rhythm loop, before, over a theatrical harmonic sequence and saturated guitar worthy of Ennio Morricone, a passionate flute solo begins, in the manner of a guitar hero's romantic flight, ending on a powerful, pathetic piano chord reminiscent of the end of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life".
Mienniel also plays harmonica on " Nude Was the Color of My Innocence ", and even kalimba on a gentle cover of "Money" from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (Roger Waters). After "Rare Thing", a four-part epic whose finale soars on an almost electro kick drum , the album closes with another haunting theme: Michael Nyman's "The Garden Becoming a Robe Room", written in 1982 for Peter Greenaway's film Murder in an English Garden.
Just like those nights when the brain offers us a grandiose Cinemascope show, Joce Mienniel's pieces come in the varied colors of grand-effect frescoes, where ego, superego and unconscious converse musically from the heart.
Guillaume Kosmicki
A fine interview with Joce Miennel on citizenjazz, to be read here.
