Travelling MusicHoepffner : La Suffocation du monde (=the suffocation of the world) (F,2006)****
When the label released this album, I don't think they expected much interest from people who do not have French as their native language. But I told them, even when I understand sufficiently the language, that the music sounds interesting enough to make appreciation from outside the French areas more than just possible. First of all what is attractive about it, are the double layers of the rhythmic repetitions of guitar pickings (acoustic and amplified) with sparse rhythms and piano or harmonica and other sounds (like slide guitar,..), combined with the slightly narrative and melancholic voice, a quality which I know also from Rale and their guitarist master Vladimir Vaclavek from the Czech Republic (with a poetic result that makes their music amongst my favourite acoustic music examples, where it doesn’t matter at all any more what is understood in the words, because there the musical concept does the work for it; see reviews on next page). The same kind of poetic undertone is here. (One of the songs is in English). About the title : I personally believe that amongst people, nowadays there is a communal suffering of all the global things that are happening (tyranny ideas from many governments and politics, environment, nature,..), even despite this background many creative expressions are at work. “This recording is meant to be listened to on a hammock” reveals already that this part of loss is less serious than we might think, because beauty can still be revealed, here in miniature musical forms, and with its recognition of it all suffering disappears with love. This is such a song book of love.
Hoepffner : La Suffocation du monde (=the suffocation of the world) (F,2006)****