Chansons du Crépuscule (Twilight Songs) is the duo of experimental French, Paris-based harpist and vocalist (and poet and scholar) Hélène Breschand, known for her multidisciplinary and genre-defying work with composer and improvisers like Eliane Radigue, Christian Marclay, David Toop, Kasper Toeplitz, and eRikm, and American, New York-based polymath improviser and composer (and writer) Elliott Sharp.
Une Lumiere Tenace (A Tenacious Light) is this singular duo’s fourth album, recorded at Sharp’s zOaR Studio in New York. The album’s title is a quote from a French poem: «She stands still, silent / Her face toward the horizon / Her torch is a burning sensation / A tenacious light». The album is framed by another poetic description: «I often have a forest in my heart; I get lost in it but at its center is an orchard where I find myself again and again».
Breschand and Sharp suggest evocative songs that allow themselves to get lost and find themselves anew in the rich sonic forests of their idiosyncratic, exploratory languages. The eleven songs blend Breschand’s siren-like, sensual voice and suggestive, dream-like songs, sung in French and following the legacy of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, and her experimental harp playing, with Sharp’s nuanced, saturated orchestration and surprisingly commanding vocal delivery, also in French. The duo say that their songs suggest «a vibrant mashup of piquant sounds, neurotica, erotica, noise, grooves, virtuosity, crudity, and the spirit of play».
These songs always play in the most intimate, twilight zone between the familiar and the concrete, and the psychedelic, Dadaist, and experimental, searching for surprising ways to fuse these contrasting edges in unpredictable, insightful ways that bring the listeners to the dawn of consciousness. As on previous albums of the duo, Breschand and Sharp avoid specifying who is playing what, allowing themselves to blur their distinct sounds and intimate conversations into an elusive, alchemical sonic entity.
The centrepiece is the most inspiring, thought-provoking «Le Droit D’Etre» (The Right to Be), referring to Le Droit d’être un homme (Birthright of Man), a famous 1968 global literary and philosophical anthology compiled under the direction of Swiss philosopher Jeanne Hersch to mark the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Chansons du Crépuscule remind us that the struggle for our human rights is never over.
Eyal Hareuveni
Helene Breschand (vocals, harp), Elliott Sharp (guitars, bass, synthesizers, violinoid, drum programming, piano, vocals)
