Florent Ghys - Ritournelles (2022) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Lisboa
02. Printemps permanent
03. Gold
04. Téléphone
05. Northeast Corridor
06. Véranda
07. Maximum
08. Coffee
09. Quatre fromages
10. Petite viennoiserie

On his third solo recording for Cantaloupe Music, Florent Ghys radically retools his creative approach with Ritournelles & Mosaïques — a wide-ranging two-part opus that pulls back the curtain on an intrepid composer, double bassist and electronics bricoleur in full sonic exploration mode. Ghys began work on the project in late 2019, but like the rest of the world, he soon found himself in the midst of a prolonged isolation period, which inspired him to expand his creative palette. On his previous album Télévision, Ghys had begun with an audio-visual idea; this time, he started at the root: with the sound.

“I just wanted to make something that sounded great,” he says, “so I spent a lot of time studying the sound of my bass — analyzing it, making sample libraries, recording it — and then studying the different microphones, different rooms, different basses too. So it really started from the sound, and then adapting my audio-visual ideas to that.”

Ritournelles is essentially the electro-acoustic, ambient instrumental portion of the program, while Mosaïques (available digitally) is more sample-based and electronic, seething with textural complexity. “Despite the differences though,” Ghys explains, “they really come from the same initial artistic impulse.”

Highly contrapuntal, intelligent and inventive...” – WQXR

“Thrilling breed of post-minimal chamber music” - Time Out NY

Florent Ghys, double, bass, e-bass, all instruments, programming
François Cha, voice
Hannah Collins, voice
Florent Ghys, voice
Rosie K, voice
Molly Netter, voice
Élodie Rousseau, voice

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [Hi-Res]