Snowdrops - Singing Stones (Volume 1) (2024)

10 years after its creation, Snowdrops returns to Gizeh Records with its 4th album, 'Singing Stones (volume 1)', the first in a series of compositions celebrating slow time and long time, somewhere between post-classical, progressive chamber music and deep listening. In it, the collective founded by Christine Ott and Mathieu Gabry develop their alchemy of analogue and acoustic timbres in a style that is at times interior, intense, narrative or dreamy, and sometimes all at once.

Singing Stones is built around two long pieces, 'Crossing' and 'Arctic Passage', which the duo have performed regularly on stage since 2016, notably at the Opéra Underground in Lyon, Silent Green in Berlin and this year at the Autres Mesures Festival in Rennes. In 'Crossing', Snowdrops deploys its full progressive palette; 20 minutes of a veritable journey from ambient jazz to baroque electronics, to a polyrhythmic, repetitive and mystical coda, a contemporary blend of piano and ondes Martenot. By revealing even more textures, 'Arctic Passage' can be seen as a nocturnal crossing among the ice, decomposing icebergs; an active listening to the natural vestiges of our world, and all that could disappear.

In 'The Weather Project', a reference to the monumental installation by the artist Olafur Eliasson, Christine Ott and Mathieu Gabry reunite with the viola of Anne-Irène Kempf, with whom they had already worked on 'Volutes' and 'Missing Island' (Injazero Records). But the main guest on 'Singing Stones' is Bartosz Szwarc's dreamy accordion, which adds subtle colour to the tracks 'Ligne de Mica', 'The River' and 'Dreamers'. 'Ligne de Mica' was composed by Snowdrops for an exhibition by the visual artist Léa Barbazanges; in her work "Ligne de Mica", we are impressed by the intense colours of the mineral, whose optical properties change according to the angle of view. The musical composition plays on the particular waveforms of the ondes Martenot, the analogue synth and the bass accordion, three instrumental dimensions that respond to each other, sometimes cancelling each other out or revealing themselves - like the work itself - in a gesture that is both minimalist and expansive.

The first track on the album is dedicated to Thai director Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, for whom Snowdrops composed the soundtracks to his first two feature films, 'Manta Ray' in 2018 and 'Morrison' in 2023. Corridors finds its inspiration in this second film, and the piece is constructed like a small symphony of breaths, in search of presence and meaning. Aroonpheng also directed the video-clip for 'The River', a neo-classical piece that is as nostalgic as it is therapeutic.

The album's artwork is by Belgian artist Julie Calbert, based on works from her 'Hyperion' series.