Plainly entitled #4, this new album of the Amants de Juliette includes an audio CD and a DTS 5.1 CD, a frustrating bonus for those with medieval CD players. However, as far as its contents is concerned, there is no need to be frustrated. The trio digs into and pursues its exploration of inextricable musical branches nesting in jazz and open to extra-European, notably Indian music. They find in the texture and depth of falsely simple tunes, (The Same Day, Hemisphere, La Paz), expertly finding the right weight and balance that brings the arrangements a delicious weightlessness. The suspended phrasing of Serge Adam is woven into that of the piano in an audacious syntactical manner while the tablas follow through with impressive polyrhythms. More ethnic, but also aerial than Brian Eno's « Fourth World Possible Music » with Jon Hessel, Les Amants de Juliette #4 is also a great jazz album. The trio here deploys an aggravating sensitivity toward sound and matter as well as a 6th sense of composition.
Anne Ramade