A group of musicians from south-western France invited me to join them on this project : playing music on the natural stalactites of the famous Pech Merle cave. We spent two full days underground, improvising "prehistoric contemporary" polyrythmic music in the midst of ancient rock art.
Both musician and sound engineer on this project, I suggested to enrich the second sessions with music instruments tecnhologically compatible with stone age culture : bull-roarers, whistles, jaw harps as well the flute of filipino musician Joon Claudio whom I invited to join us...
The project initiators released a CD with a selection of these recordings. Besides, I created Archeorythms, a sound immersion within which the limestone sound of stalactites resonates with various electronic textures, distant echoes of a still perceptible presence...
Windsketches
Joon Claudio is a philipino artist living in France, specialized in bamboo flutes. He invented the Hipanog, a ten-holes chromatic bamboo flute.
When he came to France, I produced an album of his solo flute music : "Windsketches", a showcase of what Joon likes to do with his flutes.
The album was made public at the launching of one of his exhibition in Paris (Joon is also a painter) and sold as unique, hand-painted copies.
Alpino !
I met Bernard in Mauritania where he was working in rural development NGO. When he came back to France, we spent several days in his mountain farmhouse in the Alps playing and recording music : over the years, he had been coposing a rich folk music repertoire on his diatonic accordion. In the track above, Bastien Lagatta plays delightful castanets. He had joined us on that day, being in the area : he has then gone a long way with his crosscultural band Badila.
