Invisible Worlds
« It's the story of two human beings living in a situation that seems to oppose them, and who, on opposite sides of the planet but at exactly the same time, are asking themselves the same question about existence, or the end of it. These two people will cross paths but will know nothing about it. »
Following on from my former trio Umlaut, I wanted to record some new music. I began by writing a text, then the music, as well as a few lyrics, and I brought together musicians I particularly like, and with whom I've played over the last ten years, in particular Umlaut double Trio, Radiation 10, Transistor, Sylvaine Hélary Trio, L'Ensemble Op.Cit. I conceived the project in a cinematographic way (in the process), with a storyboard, a cast, roles, entrances and exits, just like in cinema, except that there are no images. I'll let your imagination do the rest.
Pierre-Antoine Badaroux - alto and baritone saxophone
Noémi Boutin - cello
Julien Desprez - electric guitar
Marc Ducret - acoustic and electric guitar
Fred Escoffier - piano and pianet
Sylvaine Hélary - flutes
Olivier Lété - electric bass
Anne Magouët - vocals
Antonin Rayon - sound recording, mixing and mastering
Emmanuel Scarpa - drums, glockenspiel, synth, vocals and composition
Anya Belyat-Giunta - drawings
Solène Chesnais - graphic design
Project recorded June 13-15, 2014 in Burgundy by Antonin Rayon. CD released on November 7, 2016 on the COAX label.
but also
P R E S S
Sun Ship
« Drummer Emmanuel Scarpa's Invisible Worlds, released on COAX Records, is a troubling and exciting project featuring an orchestra as stunning as it is surprisingly diverse, from Anne Magouët on vocals to Olivier Lété on electric bass and Marc Ducret, who crosses paths with cellist Noémie Boutin (who, by the way, produced a fine classical album for our friends at NoMadMusic).
Scarpa is an astonishing drummer, as discreet as he is thunderous, who has been the driving force behind Radiation 10's complex rhythm section for many years, and whose features can be heard here, notably in the extremely well-oiled construction of "... They Are Getting Through", where Julien Desprez's nervous, obsessive guitar, accompanied by Pierre-Antoine Badaroux's saxophone (not necessarily expected in this field), collides head-on with Boutin and Sylvaine Hélary's joint spinning, as ethereal as the electricity is telluric.
Very quickly, in this extremely scripted disc, which tells a choral story of an impossible encounter, all Scarpa's collaborations become apparent. Radiation 10, as we've just said, explores a complex, highly written music, which sometimes wanders close to contemporary shores but is adorned with some very old-fashioned finery, notably when mezzo-soprano Anne Magouët lends her voice to the ghostly "At The Same Time". Then we remember that Scarpa is part of Sylvaine Hélary's trio, or that he crossed paths with Ducret and Umlaut, and Desprez and Phil Giordani.
The result is an explosive mix on the bangs of all the margins, which can go from languid, repetitive music ("A Loner of Desolation Peak") with a twilight charm to a sudden burst of rage ("A Man in a Crowd", a reminder that rock power doesn't take long to boil in the veins).
You move from one to the other seamlessly and even with a certain naturalness, like this orchestra which, individually and collectively, doesn't accept being pigeonholed. There's a lot going on here, in fact, and there's even some well assimilated jazz-rock thrown in for good measure.
It's reminiscent of Ducret's Tower: a kind of in-between, a zone to be explored, which decides not to make a choice between meticulousness and raw energy... And there are even moments of sweetness shrouded in acid, as in "Tangible World", where Noémie Boutin's bowed timbre work delves deep into the soul, without for a second lapsing into surface emotion.
In addition to the orchestra's great involvement, which illuminates the disc, it is Scarpa's approach that makes it quite unique. The drummer isn't omnipresent, he knows how to take a back seat. Of course, he sometimes crosses swords with the blunt electricity of his compatriots, but he also knows how to give life to this story and to the music it carries, without forcing himself to put rhythm first. Once again, the COAX collective has come up with a highly accomplished project. We're totally on board. »
Franpi Barriaux _ december 2016
____
Jazz Magazine
« When we reviewed the Umlaut trio's "Vol.2" in June 2009, we were introduced to Emmanuel Scar
pa, a drummer with abackground in punk, improvisation and academic studies in fugue and counterpoint. We find him at the crossroads of these paths, which have continued to branch out from the La Forge collective in Grenoble and Coax, of which he is a very active member, in a spirit of loyalty to his fellow travelers: Fred Escoffier, keyboardist with the Umlaut trio, or Marc Ducret, who was a guest, Julien Desprez, accomplice with Radiation 10, Antonin Rayon (here sound engineer), with whom he rubbed shoulders in Alexandra Grimal's trio... Conceiving a cinematic style of writing from a storyboard whose details he lets us imagine, he lets his composite background radiate out into contrasting universes, with no boundaries other than those set by the strong personalities he has surrounded himself with, from chamber music to noisy violence, sometimes superimposed one on top of the other, from progressive rock "à la Wyatt" to atonal lyricism, the dense, precise writing letting improvisation bubble up like water on rock. The meeting of invisible beings, evoked in his notes of intent, finds a thrilling echo in the musical challenge of these "Invisible Worlds. »
Franck Bergerot _ january 2017
____
DISC VOTED by Citizen Jazz
« Member of a wide variety of projects (Marteau-Matraque,
Ensemble Op.Cit. and Radiation 10), partner of collectives (La Forge, Collectif Coax), leader of groups (including Umlaut, Umlaut Double Trio) and composer for various ensembles (Quatuor Béla), Emmanuel Scarpa's Invisible Worlds is his first album under his own name. Behind this willingness to take charge of the entire project lies a desire to bring together the diverse influences that run through these nine tracks in an ecumenical aesthetic.
If the risk of proposing a complete but awkwardly disparate catalog was real, the whole is completely homogeneous, linked by a thread that no one can distinguish. Voices (lyrical - Anne Magouët's - or pop - Scarpa's own, with inflections reminiscent of Robert Wyatt), rock guitars and contemporary music are all explored in turn, but the result, as much a work on the compositions as an undeniably firm style, transcends genres.
Complex rhythmic structures that constantly fork and give a sense of instability (as on "... they are getting through") are contrasted with binary moments where Olivier Lété's saturated, punkoid bass becomes the playground for noisy guitars (Julien Desprez and Marc Ducret complement each other beautifully). Yet in this metrical approach, which could be no more than the result of the abstruse ramblings of a cerebral drummer, the care taken to combine timbres makes sense. Frédéric Escoffier's piano, Sylvaine Hélary's flute, Noémi Boutin's cello and Pierre-Antoine Badaroux's saxophone melt into the iron of the electric strings, drawing them into a form of ennoblement whose acute strangeness is delicately poetic.
Their unusual interventions (on "Tangible Worlds" in particular) find their source in the open landscapes that Emmanuel Scarpa takes care to sketch out through extended cycles of calm breathing. His music, situated at a nodal point where rich articulation and a certain breadth of vision intersect, rises to split the silence with a relevance that hits the nail on the head. »
Nicolas Dourlhès _ Mars 2017