Wednesday 15 May 2019

Back with Paul Castanier in the delightfully named L'homme seul est toujours en mauvaise compagnie




(I.e., the man who is alone is always in poor company, a quote from French author Jean Giorno.)

Back today with more from this ultra-talented pianist who mixed classical with folk in Claviers Celtiques, this time we have a little bit of pop-jazz harmonies associated with the waterfall-like Lisztic virtuoso slammin' the keyboard up and down.  I'm not sure how many folks are into this kind of improvised solo acoustic 'on a Steinway' as the blurb indicated but probably precious few.  Due to the monotony of the sound it's some pretty heavy slogging. I can't help but feel that in the context of a band with rhythm section, or even additional electric keys dubbed on top as he did in the other post, the result would have been so much richer to enjoy, particularly since there are so many surprising harmonies and many of the pieces that are of the order of 4-5 minutes in length evolve in such unusual directions, if you don't give up out of boredom after the first minute.  (For those out there who were born after 1990, after the first five seconds.)  Actually here and there he did overdub some additional piano sections, but always on the same Steinway.

Database information here.  Probably most would agree the best track is one called Grenier sur l'eau (attic on the water):





Orchestrated for zeuhl band, in the hands of Faton Cahen, in the manner of Zao, this would have been outrageously beautiful.




4 comments:

  1. https://www91.zippyshare.com/v/wvELnYYp/file.html

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  2. both castaniers sendspaced:
    https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/gyhryq

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  3. Hi Julian, just wanted to raise: "For those out there who were born after 1990, after the first five seconds." -> you made my day hahaha !

    Music looks nice btw, but not enough for me to DL the album, too much in the pipe for now ;) Thank you for sharing though !

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  4. Oh, thanx very much Julian, i've noticed it now, you've been too fast! :-)
    Very nice for me, good mixture of classical and jazz, thumbs up

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