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Self-proclaimed studio rat, Forever Pavot knows exactly how to teleport elsewhere in a few chords. In L'Idiophone ("The Idiophone"), the art of storytelling takes about only three minutes to unfold. Each composition features the full soundtrack of a carefully dehydrated movie, restored to its initial volume in our stereo. The album opens with a car chase, starring a scholarly gangster, and indulging in some engineering eccentricities, such as keeping a cop's siren in harmony throughout the song -- despite the Doppler effect. Perhaps it's the bad lockdown speaking, but Emile Sornin's place is a battlefield: he's having a go at every object like family members. A clock is seemingly taking the piss at him, and it becomes the pretext for a fast-paced lesson in music theory and the effects of time on people. The album was produced in close collaboration with Vincent Taeger (drums), Maxime Daoud (bass), and Sami Osta (production and mixing), who miraculously found room for every keyboard, and then some more, for a brass and string section. Arnaud Sèche came to lay down some flutes. Voices have been mixed forward, signing the end of the mutation of Forever Pavot. Since Rhapsode (BORNBAD 066CD/LP 2014) and La Pantoufle (BB 099CD/LP, 2017), his fling with the song format has become a rather serious relationship. One after the other, Emile Sornin is writing all the volumes of his ideal library music, and it appears he's reaching the oddities section. "La main dans le sac" starts with a weird trash-metal drum burst, then sets up a slimy upside-down world climate. Cue-in the cavalry: staccato strings reveal a harmonic canvas of the purest pop, then a brass squad comes to finish the job, recalling the best moments of Bernard Estardy, baron of all sound wizards. "Au Diable" stages him playing the piano on his knees, ripped off by bailiffs. Two verses in, and the lawmen turn to demons straight out of a giallo, and burn. Nestled in a few crafty instrumentals, "Les informations", clueless vocoded banger written like TV news credits, haïku-sized showcase for Emile's taste for the daft. From the bottom of the ocean, "La mer à boire" makes him drinking buddies with François De Roubaix, national treasure that Forever Pavot comes to visit regularly to borrow gear. Notably idiophones, these humble percussion instruments whose sound is produced only by their material -- triangle, claves, bells. Emile Sornin, like these self-sufficient instruments, manages very well to produce an idiosyncratic but familiar music, colored by his proverbial spring reverb. No need to source his music in his elders': like them, Forever Pavot can write, full stop. CD version includes 12-page poster booklet.
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