«Débordements» brings together you experimental French improvisers and sound artists – sax and synths player Quentin Rollet, producer and founder of reQords who has collaborated with left-off-center outfits and musicians like Nurse With Wound, Ghédalia Tazartès, The Red Krayola and The Legendary Pink Dots, and guitarist and no-input mixer player Xavier Mussat, a graphic and visual artist who runs his own label, Apocope. The album documents the first-ever meeting of this duo on stage and was recorded during a two-day residency at Instants Chavirés in  Montreuil in December 2020.

Mussat describes this meeting as a kind of fusion music, but not the fusion music you may be familiar with. But a fusion between the free and the melodic, the noisy and the abstract. A fusion between distinct approaches to sound and improving strategies Mussat and Rollet decided to make these differences a reason for trying to get closer.

Mussat and Rollet offer eight distinct and layered soundscapes in which they attempt to discover possible bridges between their different approaches. At first, they check the sonic boundaries with the contemplative and atmospheric «Pétrel-Tempêt», but soon move into the noisy, nervous and unsettling «Durance». «La vision de l’inconstant» explores even further alien, dense industrial territories and on «Peine des osselet» and «Point-Bourdon» they sound lost in deep, noisy space. But despite the differences, Mussat and Rollet create arresting and nuanced soundscapes, bridging the abstract and noisy with the melodic as the friendly sonic collisions of «Premier compartiment venu», «Elytres»and «Premier compartiment venu» testify.

Eyal Hareuveni 

Xavier Mussat (el.g, eff, no-input mixer), Quentin Rollet (as, sopranino s, Korg Monotron, eff)