Artiste : Majid Bekkas, Nguyên Lê, Hamid Drake Album : Jazz At Berlin Philharmonic XVII : Gnawa World Blues Label : ACT Music Lien : https://actmusic.com/en/jazz-at-berlin-philharmonic-xvii-gnawa-world-blues/ACT-8007 Style : Musique du Monde, Jazz Contemporain, Blues
With its world-renowned acoustics and distinctive architecture, the Berlin Philharmonic regularly opens its doors to jazz artists. The equally renowned ACT label has been echoing this since 2014 with the Jazz At Berlin Philharmonic series. For this seventeenth volume, the recording is of an encounter full of cultural fusion. Moroccan multi-instrumentalist Majid Bekkas, a former classical guitar teacher, blends Gnaoui tradition with blues and jazz; Nguyên Lê is a French jazz musician of Vietnamese origin who mainly plays guitar and bass; Hamid Drake is an American drummer and percussionist specializing in jazz and improvised music.
The music played during the concert recorded by ACT is the perfect illustration of these influences, sailing between Africa and America, where the traditions of the Maghreb countries meet with hints of trance music, like a link between the blues and the sub-Saharan regions that becomes more evident on certain tracks. Particularly interesting are the reinterpretations of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” on which the guitar takes on a slightly more catchy tone. The ensemble shines with its freshness and sense of freedom, in keeping with the modernity of the contemporary jazz artists present.
Each musician brings their own contribution and particularities to the collective work. However, Jazz At Berlin Philharmonic XVII: Gnawa World Blues does not sound like a juxtaposition of talents, but rather like an ensemble, a sharing and a common love of music, wherever it comes from. The choirs join Majid Bekkas’ voice on traditional songs, while the drums support and embellish the guitar when it takes on a bluesy tone. The timbres are always clear and each artist’s playing blends perfectly with that of the others. The distribution of the musicians on the sound stage is beautifully precise and enhances these connections.
Artist: Flavien Berger Album: Plouf! (Léviathan) Label: Pan European Recording Link: paneuropeanrecording.com Style: Pop, French chanson
Parisian Flavien Berger comes from a family involved in the film industry, and his father is also a jazz critic. As a teenager, he listened to rap and discovered composition with the game Music 2000. While studying at ENSCI – Les Ateliers, he formed the Sin collective with other students, where he was responsible for the sound design of their creations. They later moved to Brussels, and it is from the Belgian capital that the artist releases his music, where he has made a name for himself with two EPs and, above all, his first album in 2015, which demonstrates great originality in compositions based on electronics and home studio recording.
Plouf! is an in-depth reinterpretation, ten years on, of that first album. This time around, Flavien Berger has chosen to abandon computers and sequencers in favor of musicians who will literally recompose his tracks. The result is a more organic sound, somewhat timeless, reminiscent of when the great French arrangers experimented with psychedelia. It suggests Jean-Claude Vannier or the weightless moments of Alain Goraguer’s soundtrack for the movie Planète Sauvage. The collective and the acoustics take us to musical lands that play with the usual reference points, provided we pay attention.
The new Léviathan hasn’t completely lost its aquatic sounds, but it has gained a warmth and fluidity that only playing as a group can bring. And indeed, it is the musicians and their instruments that are brought to the fore. The vocals are placed just below them, favoring their contribution to the atmosphere rather than the comprehension of the lyrics. The timbres, and in particular the sound of the synthesizer, seem to pay homage to French studio recordings of the 1970s, when artists experimented with sound without completely letting go.
Artist: Drift Album: At The Party Label: Animal 63 Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg9UnQk1oPM Style: Electronic, Funk, Pop
Attached to Ferber Studios, notably Studio B where he has set up shop, while providing sound for Jean-Michel Jarre’s concerts, engineer and producer Renaud Letang has worked with an impressive number of musicians, including many of the most important artists on the French scene. In the particularly long list of albums he has produced, he has embraced a multitude of styles, but alongside these achievements, he has also been quietly working on personal compositions, which he is finally releasing. The artists featured on the album are as numerous as they are diverse in their backgrounds and horizons, sometimes very distant from one another.
Under the pseudonym Drift, Renaud Letang delivers music that is uniquely his own. It draws on influences from disco and funk, but it’s as if these styles weren’t meant to make you dance, daring instead to blend with lounge and even easy listening. Given the number of guest artists, the tracks seem to be the result of a collective effort, and depending on the participants, they take on a style closer to electronic music or hip-hop. To stay in keeping with the mood of the album, even the troublemaker Philippe Katerine offers lyrics that are less absurd and divisive than usual.
This album, produced by Renaud Letang himself, is a bit like a dish worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant, served to us with Grandma’s portions when she found us anemic. The atmosphere is perfect for relaxing on a rooftop, but audiophiles will appreciate the balance across multiple criteria, never excessive. All the instruments and other electronic sounds are very clear and manage not to sacrifice the connection between them. The soundstage is not the widest, but everything finds its place naturally between the speakers. The overall sound also maintains a balance between instrumental warmth and precision.
Artist: Swans Album: Birthing Label: Mute Link: https://mute.com/artists/swans/ Style: Rock, Alternative & Indie
A band that has undergone many iterations, with regular breaks and changes in line-up, Swans remains led by guitarist and singer Michael Gira. Initially close to Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, the band has changed style while retaining a heavy and dark foundation. Far from being a softie, the singer even regularly displayed violence towards his concert audiences in the early years, and despite a significant aura within the indie rock community, the band’s commercial success remained limited, to the point of causing problems with the MCA label and pushing the artists to develop a business model that financed the recording of studio albums through the sale of live records or other projects.
Now firmly established in a slow-tempo industrial sound, the Swans of 2025 plunge us into twilight, almost post-apocalyptic atmospheres in which there is little room for proto-melodies. On long tracks, which bring the album to almost two hours in length, Michael Gira chants morbid and violent lyrics, somewhere between screams and incantations, against a backdrop of distorted and saturated guitars, spread out over a carpet of percussion that seems to come from distant horizons. Despite everything, the original high standards that have always dominated the band’s destiny are still present in this dark new opus.
Even if the atmospheres are marked and heavy, they are not the result of an impenetrable amalgam. The elements that make them up remain clearly legible. First and foremost, the vocals reveal all their intonations and are sometimes accompanied by backing vocals. The guitar demonstrates a beautiful variety of tones, with a few acoustic parts always inserted into a light maelstrom of sounds. Finally, the percussion plays a central role in the sense of mass that emerges when listening to Birthing.
A leading band of 90s Britpop, Pulp is strongly embodied by the charismatic Jarvis Cocker, founder and sole original member today. Involved in music since his teens, he saw the band evolve around him. Starting out in post-punk New Wave, the band shifted towards a lighter pop sound in the mid-1980s and achieved notable recognition in 1994 with the album His ‘n’ Her, a success reinforced by Different Class, released the following year. Separated for more than twenty years, the band also had to say goodbye to their bassist, who passed away in 2023. The unexpected release of this album is therefore an event that will delight fans of English indie pop.
Jarvis Cocker’s relaxed crooner-style vocals and diction are as sensual and seductive as ever. They work wonders on the pop tracks that make up this album. While the compositions may not reach the intensity of the best tracks of the 90s, they will not disappoint fans with their sophisticated but never complex structures. The alternation of heavy tracks with more refined ones, plus a few stylistic deviations verging on disco, results in a very enjoyable album that can be listened to many times without ever seeming redundant.
As expected from a band of this caliber, the recording and production quality is top notch. The beautiful balance between the vocals and the other instruments is immediately apparent. The bandwidth is well used, with sometimes lush strings that call on the tweeters and rather warm drums, which are skillfully kept from becoming too emphatic if your system has trouble handling the bass. The transition between tracks with varying amounts of instruments highlights either density or precision, both harbingers of good times for the attentive audiophile.
