Seven Reizh - la Barque Ailée et l'Albatros ...quand s'envolent les mots (2023)

An invitation to travel. Travel could be specified. Because for almost 25 years, the Seven Reizh duo has always combined rarity with excellence without ever settling for a simple destination, looking elsewhere, suspended, where the music embarks. This time without Gérard Le Dortz (author), the creation of this fifth album therefore rested on the composer, pianist and guitarist Claude Mignon who was in fact going to rush the concept in a direction that was both simple and balancing act. Indeed, Quand s’envolent les Mots resumes, grinds, modifies, explodes, recomposes in “instrumental” mode most of the sixteen titles that made up the two previous opuses, La Barque Ailée and l’Albatros, disproportionate projects that emerged respectively in 2015 and 2018. And what was only supposed to be a diptych turns into a trilogy at the same time since this part does much more than “simply” play shortened flashbacks. He rewrites, reinterprets, in a word, destructures, without ever losing its soul. For Claude Mignon it is also an opportunity to share with around thirty musicians, to incorporate new instruments (bamboo flute, erhu, guzheng etc.), new voices… and if the album is not sung in the literal sense of the term, it never spares itself the support of hovering vocals, whether oriental (Pelin Başar), Asian (Huong Thanh) or even Russian (Alexis Vassiliev). This mixture of alchemy gives the adventure surprising accents, sometimes destabilizing, a fertile ground of cultures and folklores which breaks and drives out the labels. And surprisingly, even if we come as regulars to Seven Reizh. In this, the trip turns out to be whimsical and fantastic. Between the beautiful ethereal introduction (“Antre”) and its concluding counterpart where the harp plays marvelously with delicacy and the oriental-Celtic mixtures that could evoke the essences of a Loreena McKennitt, we cross paths with Hispanic guitars (“Herzel “), electrified like Mike Oldfield (“Cheñch”), let’s cross the borders of Asia while playing on the atmospheric (“Vents Contraires”), the mysterious (“Kraozon”), the great cinemascope (“Brems”) who sometimes gets carried away (“Odisea”, “The Middle Path”) as Iona could do. There is no need to review the full extent of the territories explored, discovery is part of the journey. Quand s’envolent les Mots is a double album of beautiful melodic richness, which subtle arrangements illuminate in the spotlight to offer us a musical conclusion worthy of the name. Of those who catch you never to let go.