Paris, France based Progressive/Modern Jazz project Ghost Rhythms published the track “Arcane 3 – L’Impératrice” taken from their new album “Arcanes” out on April 15, 2024. Stream the track through the YouTube player below:
“Arcanes” is an album illustrating the 22 arcana of the tarot deck, that will be available in spring 2024.
Each arcana is illustrated by Louise Laveuve, a french artist with a lovely talent.
Between 2006 and up until 2023, Xavier Gélard, Ghost Rhythms‘ drummer and co-composer, collected home-made bits of tunes and melodies of his own, and thesaurized ideas and projects his friends Camille Petit (GR’s key man) and Gregory Kosovski (GR’s bassist) left unfinished.
In 2021, he decided this bits would fit a large project aiming at illustrating images he bought from Louise Laveuve, a depiction of the 22 Arcana of the tarot.
He soon envisaged that project as a way to broaden the Ghost Rhythms‘ sound, keeping the “big band polyrhythmic” side of the band (Arcane 11, Arcane 16), and the intricate research in pulse displacement and tempi equivalences (Arcane 9, Arcane 15, Arcane 18), but also diving into intimacy (Arcane 1), mystery (Arcane 10) and sound experimentation (Arcane 2), thus keeping an odd balance between the lo-fi and the larger-than-life, in a quest of mixing sounds of everyday life and the grandiose, as “Arcane 5” shows : beginning with the sound of his guitar simply recorded by the computer mic, you can hear in the back his wife feeding his daughter, until a gong seems to move the scene into a larger, mystical place.
Home made (Arcane 8) but studio produced (Arcane 3), simple (Arcane 21) but also complex (Arcane 19), he wanted this all thing as a way to reconcile the opposites.
In the process, a lot of not so expected influences came to front, as can be heard in the Cocteau Twinesque guitar sound of “Arcane 7,” the Leonard Cohen “Songs of love and hate” ambiance of “Arcane 10” and the Afrobeat of “Arcane 12.”
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Purchase the album on Bandcamp: https://ghostrhythms.bandcamp.com/album/arcanes-2
Tracklist:
Lineup:
Composed and arranged by Xavier Gélard except
Arcane 3, Arcane 11, Arcane 16, Arcane 17, Arcane 18: composed and arranged by Xavier Gélard and Camille Petit
Arcane 4, Arcane 20: composed by Gregory Kosovski and arranged by Xavier Gélard
Played by:
Xavier Gélard (drums, guitars, bass, voices, keyboards, glockenspiel, melodica, editing)
Gregory Kosovski (bass on Arcane 2, Arcane 4, Arcane 6, Arcane 7, Arcane 8, Arcane 9, Arcane 11, Arcane 13, Arcane 15, Arcane 16, Arcane 17, Arcane 18, Arcane 20, Arcane 21)
Camille Petit (keyboards on Arcane 1, Arcane 3, Arcane 5, Arcane 7, Arcane 8, Arcane 9, Arcane 11, Arcane 13, Arcane 15, Arcane 16, Arcane 17, Arcane 18, Arcane 20)
Guillaume Aventurin (guitar on Arcane 11, Arcane 17, Arcane 20)
Alexis Collin (accordion on Arcane 7, Arcane 11, Arcane 16, Arcane 19)
Julien Bigorgne (flute on Arcane 1, Arcane 6, Arcane 11, Arcane 16, Arcane 18, Arcane 19; oud on Arcane 6)
Sonia Bricout (voices on Arcane 7, Arcane 8, Arcane 12)
Morgan Lowenstein (congas on Arcane 11, Arcane 16, Arcane 19)
Maxime Thiébaut (voices, sax and electronic sax on Arcane 16; voices on Arcane 4)
Olivier Laisney (trumpet on Arcane 19, Arcane 21)
Pedro Kouyate (n’goni and voice on Arcane 12)
Laurent Skoczek (trombone on Arcane 19)
Antoine Villedieu (violins on Arcane 11, Arcane 19)
Lionel Feugère (second drums on Arcane 16)
Emmanuel Sicherman (alto sax on Arcane 17)
Mixed by Maxime Lefèvre (Claudia Sound)