Since the dawn of mankind, music has communicated with the beyond, addressing natural and supernatural forces. As an art of mastering time, it confronts death and dialogues with spirits and gods in all cultures. In her latest album, S.H.A.M.A.N.E.S, Anne Paceo offers her own interpretation of these extraordinary faculties, drawing on rituals from all over the world as well as her own personal journey. She delivers a spellbinding record with a thousand carefully blended flavors, where trance and ecstasy are never far away.
The album focuses on voice and percussion: the musician has observed that this is the driving force behind most of the traditions she has studied. Her own voice joins those of Marion Rampal andIsabel Sörling for hypnotic harmonies and incantatory formulas, not necessarily in the service of a text (five texts out of the twelve tracks that make up the disc). Her ensemble includes percussionist Benjamin Flament, with his flurry of instruments and sound effects, from metallophones (bowls, gongs, lamellas) to xylophones (the balafon sounds on "Here and Everywhere"). The drummer synchronizes her own rhythms with the gears of these multicolored percussion instruments, in the service of a motorics entirely dedicated to letting go, for the ceremonies she wishes to evoke are also frequently based on repetitive formulas that lead to trance.
The team also includes two other loyal companions: saxophonist Christophe Panzani, whose scrolls and arabesques provide a subtle counterpoint to the aerial vocals of the singers (e.g. on "Here and Everywhere" or "Piel"); and keyboardist Tony Paeleman, wizard of electronic sounds with his bass station and Fender Rhodes put through the mill with numerous sound effects ("Wide Awake"), but also pianist on several tracks on the album ("Reste un oiseau", "Mirages", "Wishes", "Healing"...). Anne Paceo also adds the n'goni to her expressive palette, as on "Reste un oiseau", a track on which Panzani is also heard on bass clarinet, anchoring the rhythm in the earth.
Trance, ecstasy, meditation, hypnosis, mystical prayer... the many subtleties of these altered states of consciousness, enabling dialogue with occult forces, manifest themselves in music of very different characters, echoed in Anne Paceo's compositions. One finds temporal suspension, as in "Mirages", through a descent on four typical flamenco chords, whose whirlwind gradually gains momentum. Sometimes, on the contrary, it's a relentlessly mechanical rhythmic loop that drives the track, as in the short "Travelers", where the incantatory vocals seem to evoke some voodoo ritual from the depths of the bayous. There's even a hint of Steve Reich's phase-shifting and crystalline sonorities on "From the Stars", sublimated by the sudden appearance of percussion, which ends up hammering the loops with its powerful impact.
The spelling of the title S.H.A.M.A.N.E.S refers to inclusive writing and proclaims the universality of music's powerful therapeutic effects: beyond genders, borders and cultures, the answer to our existential anxieties and metaphysical questionings. What a program!
Guillaume Kosmicki