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Nicolas Cante's diverse influences and inspirations make him a pure product of our times. Trained in the school of jazz at the Conservatoire d'Aix-en-Provence, he has opened his ears and his piano to many other aesthetics: rock, noise, experimental music and techno. It was in the free parties of the 90s that he probably experienced his greatest youthful emotions, when already, in the power of decibels, he was dreaming, with his feet in the mud and his head in the stars, of the Pythagorean musical universe. He made the most of it, and the fact that this album is entirely Do it Yourself, from composition to production, is certainly not innocent.
Improvisium is his experimental project for electronically prepared acoustic piano. It took almost ten years for this second opus to be released, after a very successful first album. This album is different. Less radical, it reflects the evolution of the pianist/composer's personality, while integrating the aesthetics that have shaped him in a calmer way. After this decade, the album no longer embarrasses itself with evocative or descriptive titles: all tracks are laconically titled with the abbreviation "IV2" followed by the general key ("IV2Abm", "IV2Am", "IV2Eb"...). However, the musician's claim to abstraction - his interest in acoustics, vibration and the physicality of sound - does not prevent the expression of a wide range of sensibilities, deployed from one end of the CD to the other.
While "IV2Abm" (1) begins the record in a modal, resolutely Eastern vein, "IV2Am" (2) continues with a haunting repetitive architecture, reminiscent of a Philip Glass who encountered a drum machine along the way. The dreamy harmonies of "IV2Eb" (3), followed by the chaotic "IV2Fr2" (4), give way to a danceable, martial and sarcastic piece: "IV2Cm" (5), a boisterous, playful, grand-guignol scherzo with well-defined grooves. Then, after the ecstasy of "IV2Ab" (6), where the piano strings buzz, resonate, squeak and vibrate in a thousand ways in a suspended space-time, the stylized nostalgia of "IV2Dm" (7), the noisiness of "IV2Fr1" (8) and the new repetitive edifice of "IV2Em" (9), the modal and melancholy arabesques of "IV2C7" (10) bring the record full circle in a stylistic quasi-palindrome.
Between the trance of a rave party in its full swing, the mugginess of a jazz club in the last fires of the night and the solitary piano bar populating the conversations of the guests in a nostalgic background, the sounds of the extended piano are all beautiful without distinction, whether electronic or acoustic, and the atmospheres are chiseled with care. This is the album of a musician who has entered the age of maturity.
Guillaume Kosmicki
