The times have changed. These days, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already taken on such importance that even in the arts it is capable of replacing man. We can now have it write music in the style of Stravinsky, in the style of Bach's chorales, ask it to generate an improvisation in the spirit of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps", or even create its own original music. However, free improvisation is a domain that may well remain inaccessible to it, because behind the misnamed AI are - it should be remembered - programmers incapable of transcribing into computer code the fundamental qualities of free improvisation, at the heart of this recording: instinct, shared inspiration and genuine empathy.
Backed by these qualities, CiRuS ViRCuLe goes in search of the last unknown sonic territories with each of their performances. Betty Hovette and Laurent Paris are two "revelatory artists" in the sense that they continue to unearth untold treasures. To describe their music as "free improvisation" would be reductive, because their quest is less to find the freedom they already have than to get to the heart of the sound itself, to find the unhoped-for in what has finally happened. Far from the pre-organised, well beyond the accompanied melody and the traditional notion of harmony (without denying or discarding them altogether), these musicians of our time concentrate their creative efforts on creating unexpected textures or rhythmic phenomena outside tempo. There's a game of instrumental identity going on between them : who's playing what is one of the mysteries you'll enjoy listening to and you will enjoy these musical moments. The result is music that is never, ever directive. The incredible thing here lies precisely in the diversity of the feelings expressed/expressed, in the openness to other relationships to the world (than those some would like to impose on us), the flavour of which lies in the very uncertainty, somedelicious ambiguity.
Timeless music - possibly recorded as far back as prehistorictimes, as far back as the height of so-called contemporary' music - music of appearance - better still: of emergence!- The aim of its creators isn't so much an experiment, or a discovery of the newness, as the sheer pleasure of listening to sound(s). In other words, an antidote to the grandiloquence, therehashed, the foregone conclusions.
Ludovic Florin
