BENOîT DELBECQ - The Weight of Light
Pyroclastic Records CD PR 13
Benoît Delbecq, prepared piano
Recorded 12-13 March 2020, at Studio de Meudon, Rue d’Arthelon, 92190 Meudon, Île de France
Paris based pianist and composer Benoît Delbecq uses a prepared piano for his creations and explains that his approach to his compositions is almost a visual one, in that he ‘looks’ at his intentions from different angles to get a 3-dimensional idea of what they might be like, as though he were producing a 3D object. Reading this and hearing him play the while, one determines that his concerns are esoteric, intelligent and serious, though not, perhaps, sombre.
His piano is ‘prepared’ using the effects of striking along with dampened strings and bits of oh, maybe litter or some such ‘found’ plastic or wooden objects. His piano yields a vigorous, pulsing sensation through the percussive efforts of his left hand. I can hear how such repetition may sound like inertia to some listeners, but I found new stimuli, sympathetic frameworks and harmonious lucidity throughout, without a single, confining conventionality, except perhaps in the final track, Broken World, a comment on the Covid pandemic. Even in that case, played on an unprepared piano, Delbecq employs disjointed airs, partial chords and stages of quiet stillness to describe the dark despair and weirdness of the viral disease.
Restricting conservative directions for the music, the composer has directed us through his trial - to see the sights of unmapped terrains in a broader landscape of sound than we had imagined. The whole album has been a real treat for me – some of the best piano I have heard in years, superbly spectacular, unique and fascinating.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Pyroclastic Records CD PR 13
Benoît Delbecq, prepared piano
Recorded 12-13 March 2020, at Studio de Meudon, Rue d’Arthelon, 92190 Meudon, Île de France
Paris based pianist and composer Benoît Delbecq uses a prepared piano for his creations and explains that his approach to his compositions is almost a visual one, in that he ‘looks’ at his intentions from different angles to get a 3-dimensional idea of what they might be like, as though he were producing a 3D object. Reading this and hearing him play the while, one determines that his concerns are esoteric, intelligent and serious, though not, perhaps, sombre.
His piano is ‘prepared’ using the effects of striking along with dampened strings and bits of oh, maybe litter or some such ‘found’ plastic or wooden objects. His piano yields a vigorous, pulsing sensation through the percussive efforts of his left hand. I can hear how such repetition may sound like inertia to some listeners, but I found new stimuli, sympathetic frameworks and harmonious lucidity throughout, without a single, confining conventionality, except perhaps in the final track, Broken World, a comment on the Covid pandemic. Even in that case, played on an unprepared piano, Delbecq employs disjointed airs, partial chords and stages of quiet stillness to describe the dark despair and weirdness of the viral disease.
Restricting conservative directions for the music, the composer has directed us through his trial - to see the sights of unmapped terrains in a broader landscape of sound than we had imagined. The whole album has been a real treat for me – some of the best piano I have heard in years, superbly spectacular, unique and fascinating.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
