Fabrice Martinez – Laurent Bardainne – Thomas de Pourquery: Drôles de Dames

French saxophonist, singer, and composer Thomas de Pourquery, known as the ‘new prophet of jazz’, has recorded a new album for BMC Records with two of his musician friends under the pseudonym Drôles de Dames. The monumental, visionary musical material, bursting with energy, is performed by Thomas on vocals and alto sax, Fabrice Martinez on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Laurent Bardainne on analogue synthesizer and tenor sax. Bristling with musical quotations, this process music enriched with electronics gives the impression of having arrived from another galaxy.

 

After travelling round the Earth in the lineup Supersonic, shooting their psychedelic rockets in the largest concert halls and stadiums, these three wonderful French musicians have come together in BMC’s Budapest studio, to set off on a cosmic journey. On their way to an unknown destination, they unhooked every safety belt, and relied solely on their own instinct and experience when taking the musical direction: since they are erudite musicians, this led to completely improvised music which however evokes the feel of having been composed, and contains masses of references to pop culture and jazz. As to what gives drive to their space- dance on the brink of free improvisation, it is contemporary endeavours, ambient experiments, bright synth-pop and unbridled psychedelics. At the same time there is more than a little reflection of emblematic albums such as Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way, or Klaus Schulze’s opus Timewind, and perhaps we wouldn’t be far wrong in detecting even the influence of John Carpenter’s film music or Sun Ra’s retrofuturism (a personal favourite of Thomas’s). None of this is accidental, if we bear in mind something Thomas once said, that ‘music is the only known spaceship, or at least the only time machine. It is stunning. Here it is, before our very eyes: music is able to shorten time.’