Thierry Zaboitzeff – Le Passage

Thierry Zaboitzeff was for many years a member of the seminal avant-progressive/RIO group Art Zoyd, and since 1997, he has been involved in numerous solo projects and collaborations.  This is one of the bleakest records I’ve heard in recent memory, and the liner notes on the Bandcamp site sum up the mood perfectly:

“Our world is in the midst of turmoil. Human madness forces Earth to defend itself with violent aftershocks, like so many distress signals. Will wisdom finally become the watchword of the times to come, clearing the path to a possible future? This is the undoubtful aim of a masterful, concise record, stretching a mysterious thread between a worried past, here recalled by Jean-Pierre Soarez’s trumpet and its ‘Zoydian’ echoes, a destructive present where forests become deserts, and an uncertain future that we urgently need to be shaped. As an architect of a unique landscape of light and shadow – here is a cosmogony haunted by a underlying beat and unknown chants – where shouts and murmurs merge, melting into the heart of melodies as ancient as they are contemporary, Thierry Zaboitzeff comes to us as a human being aware of the challenges ahead. His radical, fiercely beautiful visions are ours.
(Denis Desassis)”