To explore new areas has always been Alan’s first craving.
In this album he once again absorbs all the influences of his time, to create new music which belongs only to him.
More than ever, this album displays a natural and parched curiosity for new sounds, for new techniques.
Even if he started his musical education in a classical way, his approach has most often been rooted in popular music.
This is still the case today. By using again and again many elements, stylistic or sound-related ones, familiar to the public at large, the communication with it is easy (you can see this during the concerts). But he leads it to discover other very personal and rare contributions like the sounds of his harp-prototypes, his particular vocal & instrumental interpretations, a unique way of playing with and against time, or of wandering between tempered modes and micro-intervals (both non-european and celtic). He is one of the few to move in such a natural way, even in his improvisations, within a world-wide music without boundaries.
In this album, contrary to « Au-delà des mots » (which was instrumental), the best part is given to his voice: which allows him to wander across very eclectic styles, moving from very personal versions of blues, rock, ballads, even jazz, to Jamaican influences, raga and hip-hop, Eastern Europe, Gaelic Scotland, without forgetting his Breton roots.
The important use of loops, of auto-samples as sound colours places the album within a realm close to electronic (groove) music, save for some exceptions.
Yet throughout a good half of the album songs prevail.
Alan has written them in three languages without without really choosing. Often the lyrics are bilingual, Breton-French or Breton-English, and this also corresponds with his life, his anchorages, his travels and his taste for bridges.
Alan Stivell’s 22nd album is a concentrate of energy, of anchorage in the world; he shows it in the words with which he plays like a master: his talents of a lyricist are often forgotten, as his music is so astonishing, in it’s fullest sense: filling all senses, as his inimitable voice, attaining in this album all it’s scope.
1. MIZ TU (November)
Touched by the crisis of the suburbs of which he would like to extend the questions : the inter-generational relationships, the plural identities, the frustrations, the political and social demands, corresponding with a rhythm and a raga influence.
2. LÀ-BAS, LÀ-BAS (There There)
The lyrics suffice to themselves : one day, everyone suffers a bereavement
3. YOU KNOW IT (Anao ‘ rit)
Other lyrics for other consolations
4. TE ( Beyond Words)
Never before Alan had dared unravel his feelings in a new hymn to love, crying out to the world
5. THEY
In one song so much suppressed rage, at the look of so much misery, of people abandoned, on the roads in Europe and Africa
6. INTO
Intermezzo on the solid-body harp with metal strings, very gaelic, very enchanting.
7. DRUIDIC LANDS
The fabulous ruffled landscapes of the point of Europe inevitably conjure up the ghosts of the druids; it’s also a call for an opening to the spiritual realm, without necessarily rejecting the ways that come from your inner self, without dubious amalgams.
8. MENEZ
From the same landscapes a completely different rhythm, not that much a hymn or an incantation, less romantic, less mystical, but a kind of jubilatory “fest-noz” during which the feet would leave the ground to fly away on the winds of the feeling of the moment, from the highlands of Brittany to Scotland, from jazz-blues to Eastern Europe, even Africa, at 360°.
The words are as many pictures which, according to our inspiration, evoke personal life and surpassing it.
9. EXPLORE
This harp-improv (this time it’s the prototype designed by Alan, created by Camac, heavily used in the album) in a duet with the subtle and discreet electronics of Sébastien Guérive at the devices, could pretty well conjure up the image of Alan in concert on a space station. After all, the international space station is named IIS like the city in the legend.
10. UN PARFAIT PARADIS (A perfect Paradise / Miz Tu 2)
It’s a kind of sequel to Miz Tu, a kind of remix in which the lyrics put forward – before anything else and as already evoked elsewhere – the desire for social peace and sharing, without which life for him is a dead end
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