Answer to Gravity is the first solo album by Swiss. La Chaux De Fonds-based guitarist Florestan Berset, who has studied with guitarists Christy Doran, Kalle Kalima, and Fred Frith, and is known for his collaborations with American master drummer Gerry Hemingway and vocal artist Vera Baumann in the trio MingBauSet. Berset is also a visual artist and an avid Aikido practitioner. Berset plays on this album on electric guitar with many effects and adds field recordings. The album was recorded in August 2022 and March 2024.

The eight pieces are structured as instant compositions, fusing skeletal compositional ideas, some date back to 2018, with the urgency of spontaneous improvisation. These unhurried, intimate, and nuanced pieces – soundscapes of suspended moments – are genre-defying and encompass elements of blues, folk, jazz, contemporary music, art rock, ambient music, and noise, referencing Bill Frisell’s Americana adventures, Robert Fripp’s disciplined textures, and Fennesz’ poetic noisy ambiences.. The field recordings inject a spacious, urban dimension into the already organic flow of these pieces, and all pieces are arranged as a journey that has its own inner logic.

As an Aikido practitioner, Berset appreciates the importance of discipline of the mind, body, and emotions, as well as the balance of mind, body, and emotions, for a creative person. Answer to Gravity attempts to explore the tensions of the modern world and our reactions to them. Berset’s thoughtful and delicate music proposes that we adopt solid anchors, a motivating momentum, and a planned verticality as possible responses and essential values for navigating our lives. The cover artwork by Stephanie Kunckler adds a fitting visual representation to Berset’s proposals.

Eyal Hareuveni

Florestan Berset (electric guitar, field recordings)