There are albums you listen to while, on the other hand, there are albums you inhabit. Paysages du Temps, the latest offering from composer Denis Frajerman in collaboration with pianist Marc Sarrazy and percussionist Loïc Schild, belongs to the latter. It’s one of those finest pieces of experimental music that shifts beneath your feet, breathing, humming, and whispering with every note. Frajerman is a name already woven into the fabric of European experimental music. His work, since his days with the avant-garde group Palo Alto, has always dared to wander. He does not write music to decorate silence. He writes music to challenge it, to sculpt it. With Paysages du Temps, he presents perhaps his most expansive and intimate vision to date, and in Sarrazy and Schild, he has found fellow travelers who not only understand his world, they extend this epic sonic journey to the sheer maximum. This album acts as a slow-motion meditation. It moves slowly, deliberately. It stretches. It pulses. Originally conceived as a 42-minute electronic composition, the piece has since evolved into something far more organic. Split into two parts, the work now becomes a dialogue between acoustic and electronic textures, between composed structure and intuitive exploration. The drone base remains, but it is no longer the sole guide. It is now a canvas for touch and breath, for light and shadow.
Frajerman’s touch is more than evident. There is a depth in his drones, a slow-burning energy that never overpowers but always envelops. He understands tension. He understands patience. And above all, he understands how to build a world out of sound. Loïc Schild, who anchors the first half of the album, brings both ritual and rupture. His percussion does not only keep time, it converses with it. From Tibetan bowls to metallophones, Schild creates a percussive vocabulary that feels like time travel from ancient and futuristic worlds. There is a trance-like rhythm in his performance, yet it is constantly alert, responsive, and alive. Marc Sarrazy enters in the second half with the grace of a poet. His piano lines drift like memory, sometimes lucid, sometimes fragmented. He does not dominate the sonic space but dances within it. One can hear echoes of Satie and Debussy, yes, but also of jazz clubs and silent film scores, of Soviet archives and dream diaries. His playing has clarity, yet it never loses mystery. Together, these three artists have created something very rare, a magnificent album that challenges categorization, yet remains profoundly listenable. It’s a longevious ambient soundscape, but too dramatic for mere background. Cinematic, certainly, but with no clear narrative. Experimental, absolutely, but always grounded in feeling. It is an album that keeps you interested in listening to it over and over again. One must sit with it. Walk with it. Return to it.
The production is essential here. Laurent Rochelle’s touch as a recording engineer and mixing collaborator is subtle but crucial. There is air in this mix, space to move, to think, to feel. The textures never crowd each other. Each sound has its place, its echo, its resonance. The album breathes like a living thing. Even the physical object, the cover designed by Jérémy Chinour, reflects the spirit of this marvelous full-length album. Inspired by the science fiction aesthetics of the eighties, it evokes the past yet travels into the future in so many ways. It invites the listener to think of music not just as sound but as a story, as a landscape, as a place to explore. Paysages du Temps is not for hurried ears. It asks something of the listener, time, attention, and openness. But what it gives in return is vast. It offers calm, but not complacency. It offers movement, but not speed. It offers experimentation, but never at the expense of emotion. This album is a quiet revolution and it vividly showcases how music can still be an act of thought. It can stretch beyond borders, between genres, between cultures, between technologies, and still remain deeply human. Frajerman, Sarrazy, and Schild have created timeless pieces of sonic artistry. Or rather, they have created something about time itself. Its passage. Its pressure. Its poetry. Paysages du Temps is a gift to those who still believe in music as art, as mystery, as a mirror and you should check it out on April 25 when it comes out.
Thoughts Words Action 