"Our entire past also watches over our present, and it is because the self is ancient and deep and rich and full that it possesses a truly real action. Its originality comes from its origin. It is remembrance, not discovery."
Gaston Bachelard, The Dialectic of Duration.
Melaine Dalibert, "Eden, Fall" Contrecourant. All against. Huddled inside, like a parenthesis whose two slender arches, though so thin, offer a refuge from the world’s frenzy and clatter.
Purity as a bulwark against profusion. Taking your time. Look, the birds are singing, they've never forgotten how to do it. Taking the time to be taken by it. Why not enjoy it for another moment after all? How long does a moment last? We wander along the thread of this idea. And
then you end up wondering what it would be like to rush to our downfall but in slow motion? This is the moment the first piece chooses to end. The backwash of piano notes snaps us out of our reverie. Although, here too, waves abound on the thread of an idea, in a brief precis of
evanescence. Then the fall breaks the silence. It bounces in 4233 pulsations, I took the time to count them all.
In three pieces with radically asymmetrical durations, Melaine Dalibert musically questions our relationship with time. The album’s construction draws a mischievous logic of existence by confronting it with its absurdity. « Eden" opens the album, like an ecstatic spring, while "Fall"
closes it with tension like an implacable autumn. Between the two, "Jeu de vagues" becomes a solstice at the border of these two opposites. For in Melaine Dalibert's music lies a sensitive intelligence of hope. So, when the last chord of "Fall" fades away, you immediately wants to plunge back into "Eden," and start all over again, as if this album were but an isolated sequence in an endless algorithm to which the composer returns after his previous album for the Mind Travels Series collection (Shimmering, Ici d’Ailleurs, 2022).
Amaury Cornut
credits
released May 24, 2024
Piano, composition : Melaine Dalibert
Enregistré à Saint-Maugan, par David Launay et Hervé Jegaden
mixage, mastering : David Launay
Publisher : Ici, d’ailleurs
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