Listen and purchase Eudaimon on Three:four Bandcamp
piano, vocals, field recordings — Delphine Dora
Composed, Recorded & Mixed — Delphine Dora between June 2016 and September 2017
Words — Kathleen Raine
Selection & Tracklist — Maxime Guitton
Mastering — Julien Grandjean
Artwork — Dovile Simonyte
« This is a sparse beauty. Eudaimon explores the magic and mysticism of Kathleen Raine‘s poetry in multi-tracked voice and unadorned piano. Delphine Dora‘s borrowed words melt in a melancholic sweetness, floating out on a mandolin of needled ivory. The Nico comparisons are hard to avoid, but Dora’s muse is less frost-damaged, eking a warm and inviting glow, like Finland’s Lau Nau or kuupu. A voice imbued with a magic that fireflies, flutters with forgotten faces, burns with an untutored uniqueness. In the lullaby quality of “Honesty” or the hypnotising vivisection of “Who Are We”, the weave is a simplistic one, honest. Notes seem to trickle like light-caught brooks, crystal clear, the perfume of camomile furnishing the mind as “Lament”‘s waltzing fingers meander through that ohhh(ing) voile. A gentle lilt that conjures quite a spell, finds passage in the duet of “On A Deserted Shore”, for example, its multiple personalities falling into an unembellished bleed of lonely harmonics that spirals you intimately in, magnetically affixes. The folklore embering of “Fire”, “The Invisible Kingdom”‘s gothic folds, the tattered Teutonics of “No-Where” caged in a minimalistic tonal patter of repetition (the comforting crease of repetition that milks the vast expanse); yeah, there’s plenty to love here. Every song has its own hue, tonally paints, plucks at Raine’s symbolism; the blossoming, the decay, the austere mirage that is “The Unloved”, a bat-like swoop of overlaid words to diminutive stabs of note. One of those wild-wooden-cabins of a record, a campfire to keep the wolves at bay. Michael Rodham Heaps, Freq
Some years ago, I did some short soundtracks of scenes of different films where Max Von Sydow performed (these music have been never released yet). I found back in my archives and here’s one piece taken inspiration by « hour of wolf » movie, I composed with a flutist friend (Thomas Vatant-Antonelli).
* Play it loud please (because sound can be a bit low) *
Composed by Delphine Dora & Thomas Vatant-Antonelli in 2017.
Delphine Dora : piano Thomas Vatant-Antonelli : flutes
Black Truffle and Mould Museum are pleased to announce the release of Thanking You. Compiled by Francis Plagne, Thanking You is a portrait of a network of friends and collaborators, offering up nine unreleased tracks over a running time of almost seventy minutes. Though the tracks presented here are either solo or duo affairs, many of these artists have worked together in other contexts; multiple threads of shared sensibility run through these pieces.
Opening with a lo-fi tape collage work centred on gamelan, environmental sound and drifting electronic tones from Oren Ambarchi and Will Guthrie, we are then presented with an epic fifteen minute piece for church organ by James Rushford, moving from wavering, uneasy chords to a wheezing hymnal conclusion. Rohan Drape contributes an austere yet characteristically affecting piece for microtonal electronics and piano, while Delphine Dora scatters keyboard fragments according to the inscrutable logic of chance. Closing the first side, Alex Macfarlane’s unique take on song takes unexpected turns, coming across like a bedroom tribute to Jade Warrior.
On the second side, Andrew Chalk and Daisuke Suzuki’s ‘Natsukodachi’ (meaning ‘summer trees’) layers electric guitar and field recordings of buzzing insects to conjure up a dream of summer afternoon heat. Tim Coster’s layers of synth and keyboard tones (sourced from the work of a certain well-known French composer) and rustling domestic sounds (sourced from the work of a certain well-known French film director) gently drift along side by side, interacting in surprising ways. Joe Talia offers up a dynamic slice of synth and tape, a rougher, more gritty complement to the sparkling electroacoustic expanse of 2018’s Tint. Finally, Julia Reidy’s surging closer yokes together guitar, raw electronics and room sounds into a lurching, staggering assemblage that eventually makes way for gently chiming tones.
En 2019, j’ai sorti deux cassettes en édition limité qui sont toutes les deux épuisées à la source.
La première « dunkles zu sagen » sur des poèmes d’Ingeborg Bachmann. Merci au label fort evil fruit pour la confiance, à Andrew Chalk pour la magnifique pochette d’album et Sean McCann pour le mastering. J’ai quelques copies k7 qui me restent et sont disponibles sur mon bandcamp, sinon l’album est en écoute et en téléchargement intégral.
« Like most of the records I have heard from this french artist, Dunkles Zu Sagen is imbued with a shimmer both intimate and experimental. Dora is working here with poems by the late Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann ( a somewhat tragic figure in the history of Post-Second World War feminist literature). The title can be translated several ways but the one I like the best is Expressing The Dark. And even I cannot understand a single world of the vocals, the plain-woven piano playing and stark vocals evoke a deep intellectualism that is none the less real for being a phantom. Admittedly, I was ready to be stunned by the darkness. But stunned I am. » (Review by Byron Coley, The Wire)
Greywood Miniatures est la dernière de mes collaborations avec Sophie Cooper. Ce disque a été réalisé en partie en 2018 lors d’une résidence à Greywood Arts, à County Cork., en Irlande. Il a fait l’objet d’éditions sucessives et d’un léger travail de remontage. L’album sorti en k7 à 50 exemples sur le label Dark Outside a été épuisé en moins de 24 heures, il est désormais en écoute intégrale et téléchargement à prix libre sur le bandcamp.
Pour fêter ce disque, le nouveau collectif « l’affinité des sols » m’a demandé de faire un mix sur le thème du folklore, de la féminité et de la terre. Voici le mix que je leur ai proposé (On y trouve notamment quelques musiciennes ayant participé au disque et autres sources d’inspiration) :
Louise Landes Levi – Part V
Jackie McDowell – Hats off to (Hal) Borland
Anahita – Spiral Of Ulmaria
Natalie Rose Lebrecht – Lost
Spires That In The Sunset Rise – Let The Crows Fly
Collie Ryan – Prairie Day Lady
Brannten Schnüre – Blut Auf Der Gosbertsteige
Current 93 – When The May Rain Comes
Sam McLoughlin & Bridget Hayden – Pluto
Kathleen Baird – With Which These Waters swarm
Fursaxa – Desiree
Emmanuelle Parrenin – Maison Rose
Aine O’Dwyer – Knownunknown
Sylvia Hallett – White Fog
Lau Nau – Keinu Taipuu Alla
Magahi – six songs (extract)
Meredith Monk – Quarry Lullaby
Josephine Foster – The Peak Of Paradise
Voici quelques chroniques :
Ce disque a été classé dans les 10 albums préférés de la décennie par Julia Holter.
« Trop d’amis (dont Sylvia Hallett, Le fruit vert, Lau Nau) pour tous les nommer, trop d’instruments pour tous les énumérer colorent cette épopée fantomatique signée Delphine Dora. Cordes, vents, synthétiseurs analogiques, sons électroniques, accordéon, bruits divers : c’est un véritable orchestre là-dedans. Mais tout en retenue. La Française invoque avec ce disque en français une spiritualité éthérée ancrée dans les éléments, prenant son essence dans un passé païen et gothique. Demi-incantations, les mots de Dora sont faits d’une poésie du mystère et de l’émerveillement. Les courtes pièces de L’inattingible (déjà, ce titre, c’est beau, non ?) sont une illusion psychédélique collectivement assemblée sous la commande d’un cerveau rêveur. La beauté du geste collectif, c’est qu’il tisse un enchevêtrement anonyme. À qui appartient cette voix, cette note, ce râle ? Qu’importe. »
« (…) L’Inattingible has the feel of a big statement – for starters, Dora has taken collaboration much further than in the past and the cast of contributors is extensive. The fourteen contributors include vocalists Jackie McDowell, Laura Naukkarinen and Caity Shaffer, several multi-instrumentalists including Gayle Brogan on e-bowed zither, guitar, hammered dulcimer and aeolian chimes, and she’s even integrated Québecquois duo Le Fruit Vert. Those familiar with Dora’s work will know about the melodically and emotionally indeterminate spaces she inhabits but there’s plenty that is new here: she sings entirely in French for the first time, and the process of crafting (writing and editing) the 21 pieces has been more involved than the spontaneous approach she has previously favoured. Without becoming overburdened, Dora’s voice and piano are richly embellished – the gorgeous ‘Loin’ floats on a bed of keyboard, strings, flute and a gathering cloud of vocals, while the brief ‘Métamorphose Déracinée’ brings together spoken word, distant, beguiling oboe, running water, piano and creaking, fluttering and rattling noises. Each track is like another glimpse into an abandoned ornamental garden; vegetation grown wild, water still flowing through cracked fountains, echoes of voices carried on the breeze. »
A beautiful lullaby-esque soundscape, this. The soothing French vocals a paper boat floating out on a lilting tide of gentle disquiet, instrumentals that subtly blur boundaries. Something that’s especially true of “L’inexploré”’s panoramas, with an avant classical verve where the fragments of narration ease you elsewheres. Dora’s invited lots of like-minded musicians to help her sculpt this recording, including Pefkin’s Gayle Brogan and Fonal’s Laura Naukkkarinen (Lau Nau) amongst others, an array of talent fleshing out Dora’s unique piano/vocal work with plenty of extra colour. Aeolian chimes, stones, bicycle wheels and musical saws, as well as a tirade of chorusing extras that calligraphically dine, slip psychedelically into your ear. L’inattingible is an inspired piece of work that’s attentively observed, its shapes left to mirage, elusively flutter as they unearth buried sensations from the sediment. (…) A sweet delirium that holds you captive, captivated, cuts through all this February greyness with its felt-like warmth.
