If you liked Robert Wyatt and Moondog, Borja Flames will please you… As for the Nimbus Sextet, it’s the new English jazz scene that’s coming to you.
#SessionLive1 Borja Flames for the release of the album Nuevo Medievo.
He has three brains, a thousand lives, past or parallel, and his name is Borja Flames. Spaniard, Parisian, Burgundian, cosmonaut, we no longer know. His head is that of a pope, a king, a lion, a faun or a melancholy centaur. He is well dressed, with meatball holes and his beard: Merovingian. We knew him in June and Jim, of which he was the south face (in the other hemisphere: Marion Cousin) a duo recently transformed under the name Catalina Matorral, a true electronic pastoral. We saw him reshuffle his cards for the first time in 2016 with Nacer Blanco, the first album under his name, whose tipsy clockwork, Tower of Pisa-style totems and bony madrigals evoked Moondog, Robert Wyatt and the Cheval postman, some in the others, no matter how. After which Rojo Vivo (2018) between pale house and dark preaching made us afraid and happy and danced.
Nuevo Medievo is even more beautiful, more astonishing. From the beginning, sung on tiptoe, the silvery voice of robotic effects on a synthetic bedside rug studded with cymbals, we feel bareheaded in a vast cabinet of stars, we are captivated. There are laser beams, oracle lyrics to the vocoder. Paul Loiseau, the Morse drummer, makes the whole kitchen sound like an orchestra of stoned calculators, then Borja Flames accelerates the pulse of the record with a diction of a bad-tempered television news anchor on a jungle background before Marion Cousin and Rachel Langlais make capsize everything, which of a Saturnian vocalization, which of a bizarrely tuned synth. From which everywhere fall hits, real ones, in a shower of asteroids.
Negro Negro is suave, mysterious, moving, surprising like an unexpected kiss. We would like to listen only to her, but then comes Magnetismo, which makes one go crazy with joy. Then Marioneta, dry and airy like Prince period Sign O’The Times, and on which one has not finished dancing, even alone with his head under his arm. Nuevo Medievo thus goes full length, stiff and groovy, cerebral but exploding with dreamy tumours. Powerfully entertaining, filled with odd rhythms, computer choirs, keyboards that slide and slide. Nuevo Medievo is somewhat reminiscent of the synth-wave scene and the Iberian post punk of the 80s. It also evokes lofi versions of the panoramic SF hits of Franco Battiato from No Time No Space (very distant worlds, sound research, maous refrains), the Arthur Russel disco, or even Porque te vas, yes yes, Sade, Motown B-sides played at IRCAM one evening of frank sloppiness, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrel in full slow motion under the anachronistic neon lights of a shisha bar or Miami Vice soundtracks imported into Blade Runner rushes.
If Nuevo Medievo, like all the records of Borja Flames, a cannibalistic music lover, summons a certain number of other artists, it is to organize unexpected encounters between them, and to dissect them each in a drive that is at once scientific, erotic, amorous and gastronomic before freeing itself from it and drawing in all the diagonals authentically unheard-of features. Celebrate him.
► New album Nuevo Medievo (Murailles Musiques / Records of the Permanent Festival 2022).
Titles performed at the Grand studio
Nuevo Medievo Live RFI
Marioneta excerpt from the album Nuevo Medievo see the clip
Magnetism Live RFI.
Line Up: Borja Flames (synth, sampler, voice)
Sound: Benoît Le Tirant and Quentin Dubois.
Then, for the #SessionLive2, we receive the British Nimbus Sextet for the release of the album Forward Thinker.
Like Sons of Kemet or Tenderlonious, the Nimbus Sextet comes from the vibrant British jazz scene. Signed to Acid Jazz, Eddie Piller’s label, this band from Glasgow delivers an alert production heiress of Herbie Hancock and the James Taylor Quartet. Launched by keyboardist Joe Nichols, the ensemble distinguished itself two years ago with Dreams Fullfield, a first LP stuffed with heady arrangements, before illustrating a remix for STR4TA, Bluey and Gilles Peterson’s rare groove galette. With big names like Jonny Enser and Mischa Stevens, the Nimbus Sextet returns with the significant Forward Thinker. Carefully constructed, this new opus confirms an obvious taste for brassy sounds and jazz-funk.
Perceptible accents via High Time, the opening track sung by Charlotte de Graaf from Kid Creole And The Coconuts; or even with To The Light, a feverish up-tempo theme and trademark of the Scottish group. Vincent Caffiaux.
► New album Forward Thinker (Acid Jazz/Pias 2022).
Titles performed at the Grand studio
Trap door Live RFI see the clip
To the Lightfrom the album
High Time Live RFI
Forward Thinker Live RFI.
Line Up: Joe Nichols (keyboards), Charlotte deGraaf (Lead Vocals), Alex Palmer (drums), Honza Kourimsky (Guitars), Euan Allardice (Trumpet), mischa stevens (Bass) and Michael Butcher (Saxophone).
Sound: Fabien Mugneret, Mathias Taylor, Quentin Dubois.