Delphine Dora
Hymnes Apophatiques
(Morc, 2022)
Fluid Radio (by James Catchpole) :
Hymnes Apophatique is the latest album from French musician Delphine Dora, recorded last year during a residency at the church of St Saphorin, Switzerland. Delphine recorded her improvised music on the church organ, an instrument she fully respects and recognises, and this level of respect comes through in her music.
Although traditionally confined to the dusty recesses of a church, the organ is so much more than an instrument of devotion. Delphine isn’t afraid to open the doors and push the sound of the organ out and into the modern world. No hesitation is found in her music, and in her wish to spread its wings.
With so many pedals and tonalities, the organ can be an intimidating instrument, not something to necessarily master but to temporarily hold the reins and somehow snake-charm its tones. Delphine manages to remain in control at all times while still respecting its background and rich history. Somehow, the organ exhales with the unfathomable weight of history.
One of the most interesting elements of Hymes Apophatique is the introduction of her voice, which accompanies the instrument, partaking in a slow, entangled dance, but never blotting it out or overshadowing it. Trenches of deep reverence, respect, and awe are maintained. Other sections are incredibly melodic, sometimes sounding like an echo from a fantastical forest and at other times carrying medieval undertones. All the while, though, the organ is airy and well ventilated.
Its reverent nature is not lost – not even a drop – as it steps forward into the glowing sun of a new dawn.
Terrascope (by Simon Lewis) :
Delphine Dora
A l’abri du monde
(Early Music, 2022)
Foxy Digitalis (by Brad Rose) :
The Wire (Issue 459, May 2022) by Bill Meyer :
« Delphine Dora developed A l’Abri du Monde from two years of recordings that she made at the Val d’Allier Ecopôle, a park near the city of Clermont Ferrand in central France. Once the site of a gravel quarry, it has been rehabilitated into a place where birdwatchers can observe herons and local residents can stroll its plank-paved pathways. A l’Abri du Monde translates as Sheltered From The World. The title articulates what Ecopôles patrons might say they’re seeking when they come to visit, but the piece, which lasts just under 33 minutes and is released by Jon Collin’s Early Music label, aspires to more complicated responses than simply yearning to make the nature scene.
If you do an image search for the Ecopôle, you’ll find vistas of woods and wetlands. The sounds of flora and fauna are well represented by the field recordings, but Dora makes sure that human activity is equally well represented. She’s layered more collected sounds,, including footsteps, distant vehicles, and unidentified machinery. Additionnaly, she has added sparse keyboards and wordless vocals, pushing threads of wistful, remote music through the broader sonic fabric.
The effect is initially lulling, but the further in you go, the less natural the juxtaposition sound. (…) »
Delphine Dora
La chasse à l’enfant
(Bandcamp, 2021)
REVUE & CORRIGÉE, Décembre 2021:
« Rarement une musique nous replonge dans le passé qui fuit comme celle de Delphine Dora, chacune de ses notes réveille un écho évanescent en nous, remémore une ancienne mélodie oubliée dans le tourbillon de la vie, liée à notre enfance, une grappe de notes fragiles, vacillantes. Chacun d’entre nous y retrouvera un fragment de sa vie suspendue dans le souvenir, comme avant elle, la musique de Satie pouvait nous y entrainer, arrêter l’aiguille de nos horloges. Il y avait cet album aussi « Desertshore » de Nico, et cette chanson inouïe « Le Petit Chevalier », qui semblait nous appeler de notre enfance. « La Chasse à l’Enfant » en serait le miroir mélancolique, suite de notes au piano s’écoulant dans notre salon comme autant de poussières jouant dans la lumière du crépuscule, un orgue obscurcissant l’image. On pourrait aussi évoquer Brigitte Fontaine, celle de « Comme à la Radio », Hector Zazou et Joseph Racaille (ZNR), Andrew Chalk ou Richard Youngs, si Delphine Dora avait besoin de compagnonnage autre que celui de son piano, de sa voix et de la poésie qui guide ses doigts sur le clavier. (…) elle continue d’improviser sur ce vieux piano bourgeois, l’orgue ecclésiaste, ses bacchanales païennes, populaires, fantômatiques, évoquant autant les minimalistes américains que l’école française des Debussy, Fauré, Ravel. Chaque miniatures comme ces « Tout autour de l’ile » semble là pour arrêter le temps, ai-je déjà entendu cette mélodie ou est-ce une autre qui m’enlace. Il y a comme un frottement entre les notes lentes et notre mémoire paresseuse. « La Basilique » pièce pour orgue et cloches nous réveille de notre rêverie, le fantôme de Nico passe, le chant muet. Le piano reprend « Vezeley », comme un cours d’eau courant dans la lande, se dissipant dans le brouillard, une autre ombre y passe, celle de Satie, un éloge à la lenteur. Nous finirons par disparaitre comme chacune de ces notes, l’une après l’autre suspendue dans l’air, restera le silence. (…) » (Michel Henritzi)
Delphine Dora
L’esprit du lieu, le lieu de l’esprit
(Titania, 2020)
LES CHRONIQUES DU POURPRE :
« (…) le lieu de l’esprit résiderait-il en ce carrefour métaphysique, ou en nous-même aussi inaccessible que l’ancien paradis, Delphine Dora prend la parole : il est temps de tirer un trait sur cette poésie inquiète et sa voix prend des couleurs, elle plaide pour un retour vers le réel, (…) le lieu est en nous, dans le renouement à tout ce qui nous relie au monde et aux autres, (…) il est partout, il porte en lui les fragments du passé et il nécessite la restauration d’un ordre différent. (…)
Encore une œuvre ambitieuse. A écouter attentivement et à méditer longuement. Ces deux pistes de cassette n’expriment-elles pas la ligne de partage entre poésie et musique. Avec ce tour de force dans la A de faire de la musique le vecteur de l’inexprimable métaphysique de toute essence et dans la B de mettre en scène par le dire de la poésie le nihilisme de la poésie elle-même, le lieu étant positionné dans les îles de séparation et de convergence formées par le limon des deux fleuves, celui qui porte le son, celui qui charrie le sens, deux géants qui se combattent et s’entrelacent afin de mieux se séparer, pour mieux se réunir et recommencer leur infini manège. L’entre-deux n’étant que les îlots infertiles de ce que l’on nomme le réel. »
Delphine Dora
L’inattingible
(three:four/Meakusma, 2020)
MOJO, June 2020 :
MEAKUSMA, #3, August 2020 :
THE QUIETUS :
« (…) 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 (…). 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. »
SECTION 26 (par Renaud Sachet) :
Le Devoir :
« 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. » (Sophie Chartier)
Delphine Dora & Sophie Cooper
Greywood Miniatures
(TDO, 2019)
THE WIRE :
« Great to have a new release by this wonderful duo of UK and French origin. Some of their prior collaborations place a high value on vocal blends and the support thereof; but this new tape is more reliant on instrumental passages, some of which are jazzy as hell. Piano and other keys are there, as well as trombones, voices and xylophone, and whatever else they can get their hands on. So, while there are still plenty of vocals wending their way through the music here, the brunt is instrumental and will surely please anyone who knows a good thing when they hear it. » (Byron Coley)
Delphine Dora
Eudaimon
(Three:four, 2018)
FREQ : « 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. »
THE WIRE, #410, April 2018 :
Delphine Dora & Sophie Cooper
Divine Ekstasys
(Feeding Tube, 2018)
LA VOIX DES SIRENES, n°10 :
« Voici la dernière collaboration entre deux musiciennes, très prolifiques et définitivement hors norme, j’ai nommé Delphine Dora, pianiste aventureuse et fondatrice du label Wild Silence, et Sophie Cooper, multi-instrumentiste, poétique et inspirée venue d’Outre-Manche, deux artistes cheminant pour ainsi dire à la lisière du monde musical connu. Pour l’occasion, elles nous entraînent dans une sorte de douce spirale psyché-drone libératrice. Cette Divine Ekstasys qui semble figurer la recherche d’une forme d’accomplissement mystique, où l’atteinte d’une terre promise fantasmée régalant les sens, s’apparente à un étourdissement lent et progressif où se côtoient instruments divers, voix éthérées, chuchotements…le tout savamment imbriqué pour générer une authentique brume sonore, jamais sombre, bien que possiblement inquiétante. Une oeuvre qui peut évoquer certains travaux de Fursaxa et/ou de Current 93 première période. »
ATTN: MAGAZINE :
« Divine Ekstasys is pure exhalation, steered by collective intuition and a trance-like submergence in the feedback loop of listening and emitting. (…)
Divine Ekstasys feels live and real-time – a documentation of an event rather than a process of sculptural refinement. I hear the echo of the room that they occupy, which smears the sound into mirage. And I hear them gradually becoming this echo, as Dora’s muttered whispers chase their reflections and loop themselves, and Cooper steers her trombone into the reverb, hovering upon microtonal intervals that cause the cloud of sound to ripple like desert air. And yet, as far as I can tell, there is no post-production enhancement or overdubbing after-the-fact. The album feels like it was captured on two microphones placed on the floor, set to “record” and then forgotten about, as Dora and Cooper embark upon a process that transcends all awareness of its capture, and transcends all awareness of themselves. »
WE NEED NO SWORDS :
« Dora and Cooper’s debut, 2015’s ‘Distance, Future’ was a light-drenched wonder, in which organ and trombone wound subtle tendrils around their beatific hymnals. The follow-up, 2017’s ‘Think Away’, reduced the scale, replacing broad washes of texture with finely-wrought details, to entrancing effect. ‘Divine Ekstasys’ synthesizes these two perspectives, carving taut, abstract scrapes across melancholy ballads and decorating languid, seismic drones with enigmatic, melodic curlicues.
A similar palette to those previous releases is at work here – the duo’s voices, often manifested in wordless mantras and chants, as well as trombones, synths and piano. But these ingredients are deployed with expertise and discernment to produce dense, tangy soundscapes that open new worlds of sonic possibility. The mood is sombre, drugged almost – swooning calls and eerie twinkles float above ominous rumbles and slow-moving, foreboding chord progressions. »
Delphine Dora & Mocke
le corps défendant
(Okraïna, 2017)
LOW COMPANY :
« The mellow fruits of a long-term, long(ish)-distance collaboration between Paris natives Delphine and Mocke, who now respectively reside in Brussels and the « deepest French countryside », Le Corps défendant is an unorthodox, Arcadian folk-rock masterpiece come out of the woods to steal our hearts and minds. (…) Dora’s vocals, beautiful but not a little unnerving, oscillate between hypnotic, possessed-by-god-knows-what glossolalia, to pseudo-medieval plainchant, amounting to a kind of white-witch chanson that feels free and unforced: we’re in the realm of Nico’s Desertshore, Emmanuelle Parrenin, Norma Winstone, Rose McDowall’s Sorrow. »
SUPERWORLDINDIETUNES :
« A stunning collaboration between Delphine Dora & Mocke. The album – Le Corps Défendant – is an absolute treasure to listen to. I went for Le Service Abstrait but it could have been any one of them. 10 SWITS out of 10 here guys. «
THE WIRE :
« This is the second Okraïna set from Delphine Dora, but this one she is accompanied by the ex-pat French guitarist Mocke, whose playing has drawn comparisons to that of Loren Connors. Delphine plays a variety of instruments and vocalises in her native tongue, drawing her words from « classic texts » and other sources. As always, there is a true touch of otherness to her voice and approach. While most of the melodies are homespun, there is an abiding oddness to the electronic squiggles, keyboard swathes and found sounds that sit behind everything. At times it sounds as though she’s reciting nursery rhymes from another planet, and at others her voice floats like an abstract cross between Suzanne Langille’s and Jane Birkin’s. And there’s a lazy jazziness to Mocke’s guitar playing that sets everything off quite beautifully. » (Byron Coley)
THE WIRE, march 2018:
Review of Concert of Delphine Dora & Mocke @Cafe OTO
« In a dreamlike, empathic manner Dora and Mocke indicate changes to one another through subtle nods, looking as though they are steering the musical passages as if by gentle tugs on reins. Their album Le Corps défendant is just as meandering live as on record. There is a Brigitte Fontaine quality to Dora’s voice as those points where she intercepts the music with barely audible French spoken word, turning away quickly to watch her hands play through a droning, almost medieval sounding piano melody. Mocke uses guitar arpeggios to highlight Dora’s melodies, and occasionnally they leap out to lend a psychedelic influence similar to that found in Polish band Ksiezyc’s music. The natural suitability of their playing styles makes you hope that Delphine Dora and Mocke will continue to develop their repertoire. »
(Lottie Braziers)
Delphine Dora & Sophie Cooper
Think Away
(Was Ist Das ? – 2017)
EARS FOR EYES :
« ‘Think Away’ by Delphine Dora (piano) and Sophie Cooper (trombone) is magical in an ambiguous Studio Ghibli sort of way. Their music captures a sense of the uncanny that is on the border between menace and wonder (…) The sounds on ‘Think Away’ exist in a captivating psychedelic swirl, Sophie and Delphine revolving and condensing around one another, attuned closely to each other’s imaginative worlds. Blurred dream logic pervades throughout: the improvisations often wobble like rickety scaffolding but collapse »
Delphine Dora
Parallel World
(PowerMoves Library – 2016)
AGITATION FRITE III :
« La pianiste et vocaliste Delphine Dora, quand à elle, invente un monde à base d’improvisations et de compositions spontanées, parfois basée sur la poésie de Sylvia Plath ou Walt Whitman ou bien les « folk songs » de Luciano Berio pour Cathy Berberian, comme en témoigne un enregistrement en compagnie d’Eloïse Decazes.
La cassette Parallel World en offre un aperçu jamais très loin des recherches de Christina Carter, Fursaxa, voir Richard Youngs sur Advent (pour le piano notamment). Sur d’autres enregistrements, des morceaux comme « Funga Mundi » ou « le mystère demeure » évoqueraient plutôt respectivement, Meredith Monk et Nico. On ne sait quoi de Brigitte Fontaine aussi – et parfois. On dit aussi que Julia Holter apprécie la française. » (Philippe Robert)
WE NEED NO SWORDS :
« two longform piano and vocal explorations that mark languorous dances from dappled sunlight into shadowier realms. (…) Forcing those revenant energies up from her lungs, shaman-like, she lets them loose to find their own twisting paths through the flux. »
PSI LAB:
« i keep coming back to this PARALLEL WORLD where her music seems fully realized and perfectly crystallized – she conjures otherworldly bygone acid folk arias with haunting modern classical / minimal piano accompaniment that recalls CHRISTINA CARTER and FURSAXA but with even more alluring intimate cerebral weirdness and intersecting further out outsiders like INCA ORE and PHIPPS PT and JACKIE MCDOWELL aka INEZ LIGHTFOOT (whose latest gem NEW BLOOD MEDICINE is out via WILD SILENCE, grab it while you can) – sadly PARALLEL WORLD is sold out at the source but don’t let that diminish this amazing album, dig the free download. »
Delphine Dora
Le Fruit De Mes Songes
(Bezirk, 2016)
THE QUIETUS :
« On « Le Fruit De Mes Songes » Delphine Dora delivers a different, perhaps darker, shade of the unknown. Sixties psyche folk, Christian hymns and nursery songs – styles regularly deployed in horror films to deepen the mystery – seem syncretically blended here. (…) The compositions remain remarkably in flux between harmony and atonality yet somehow retain a classical elegance throughout. This leads to suspicions that their intent was not to spook, but to transgressively experiment to forge new forms from ancient modes, forms so new they unwittingly inspire misdirected associations. »
WE NEED NO SWORDS :
(…) Dora’s eight pieces adding new shades and perspectives to her aesthetic without disrupting the base elements that make her work so captivating.(…) But for all that retro-futurist lushness, le fruit de mes songes, like Dora’s previous solo work, actually sets the pointer in the other direction, digging back through time to something strange and unfamiliar in the European tradition. Dora’s instrumentation mines both the classical and avant-garde worlds (Olivier Messiaen, Bernard Parmegiani, Meredith Monk), while her fragmentary poetry has echoes of Breton and Soupault’s surrealist automatism – yet the result is something that summons up the distant past. Forget Greil Marcus’s old weird America, this is Europe: older, darker and more mysterious.(…) » (Paul Margree)
Delphine Dora
L’au-delà
(Fort Evil Fruit, 2015)
THE WIRE :
« French musician Delphine Dora is in great form here. Improvising in various keyboards and singing with all the ominous intent of a witch from Polanski’s Mac Beth, she sounds great. The feel is less much friendly than on her recent Okraïna 10 », but it’s a wonderful whip of styles. Parts are akin to something Brigitte Fontaine might have done, but much is from turf untouched » (Byron Coley)
WE NEED NO SWORDS :
« Only about a third of the pieces on Delphine Dora’s L’au-delà use the piano as their primary instrumentation, but these are the pieces that stand out, at least at first. Dora’s playing meets at the junction of Monk’s broken physicality and the minimalist, hammering repetition of Terry Riley’s Keyboard Study No. 2, the density of the latter crossed with the fluid breadth of the former, all the while holding a jewel-like glint of beauty close to its heart (…) The vocals, with their contrasting lines of high-pitched ululations and spoken stream-of-consciousness monologues, are in the tradition of experimentalists like Meredith Monk or Annette Peacock. But Dora ups the melodrama and anxiety to a new pitch, multi-tracking herself to pack each piece full of sonic information. That combination of vocal and instrumental overload puts immense pressure onto the fabric of songs such as Les chevaux de feu, pushing them almost to breaking point. Listening to this piece is like trying to walk to the shops after a night on the whisky, the alcohol-induced euphoria fading into an unbalancing dizziness, internal and external stimuli colliding into a hellish miasma of light and sound. Idiosyncratically brilliant. » – Paul Margree
WAS IST DAS :
« L’au-delà is another remarkable album. It opens with « Jaillissements cathartiques », a track of savage piano and multi-tracked voices, sounding like John Cage scoring a 70s haunted house film. (…) Listening to this album, you feel aware of great forces at work. It feels like a metaphysical peep behind the curtains, the mechanisms of life. These sounds are pure poetry. Whatever next, Delphine ? » (Ned Netherwood)
Delphine Dora & Sophie Cooper
Distance Future
(Was Ist Das?, 2015)
PITCHFORK « Best Experimental Albums of 2015 » :
« France’s Delphine Dora and England’s Sophie Cooper have both made impressively uncategorizable music over the past decade, and while they’ve been mutual supporters (Dora released Cooper’s excellent Our Aquarius on her Wild Silence label last year), this is the first time they’ve played together. Improvising in a echo-laden church in West Yorkshire, the pair found a sound distinct from their respective individual work. Their voices fill the space in a haunting-yet-reverent way; some of the tracks are like wordless hymns sung by ghosts. Distance Future’s surrounding ambience reminds me of the holy drones of Charlemagne Palestine and Janek Schaefer on Day of the Demons, but where that record’s power came in clarity, Dora and Cooper’s work is more mysterious—and ultimately something only these two could conjure. « —Marc Masters
THE QUIETUS « Best Experimental Tapes of 2015 » :
« One of these months I’m not going to feature a tape from the Was Ist Das label, I swear! They’re not making it easy though. This latest release is insanely beguiling, and features a collaborative session between West Yorkshire based musician Sophie Cooper and French improviser Delphine Dora. Recorded in the atmospheric confines of Todmorden Unitarian Church, Cooper reaches for her trombone alongside electronics throughout the tape’s 13 deftly chosen snippets from the performance, while Dora swaps her usual piano for organ and percussion, with both utilising their haunting wordless vocals throughout. The possible comparisons are few, yet brutally raw in nature: Keiji Haino’s Nijiumu albums, the sound of an Alfred Schnittke choral work reflected by an infinite number of ancient stone wall corners, small snippets of La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela epic vocal drones. Every moment in the unitarian church feels imbued with some truly ancient sounding ritualism. Cooper’s excellent trombone playing adds a rarely heard colour to proceedings, and Dora’s off-kilter percussion contributions (as on ‘Interlude 2’) yank the carpet out from beneath us just as we settle into the strangely alluring darkness summoned by the pair as they drone, sing and otherwise concoct strange sounds before our very ears. Distance Future is pure sonic magic, and the strangest part is, we’re never quite sure if we’re heading into, or escaping from the darkness. » – Tristan Bath
Delphine Dora & Eloïse Decazes
Folk Songs Cycle
(Okraïna, 2015)
ANTHEM REVIEW :
« It can be argued that ‘Folk Songs Cycle’ is an album focused far more on vocals than instrumentation. Both Decazes and Dora have done a stunning job bringing their vocals to life, and it would be hard to find fault in their talents, but the lessened impact of the music brings an imbalance to the album that is hard to shake. Certainly, ‘Folk Songs Cycle’ is an album to be praised, but it sadly suffers from the curse of comparison, and when comparing it to Berio’s original work, it’s a solid effort that falls slightly hollow. »
THE ACTIVE LISTENER :
« With ‘Folk Songs Cycle’, both Decazes and Dora have clearly taken these simple but emotive songs to their hearts and the glacial beauty of their interpretations recalls both the relatively unadorned folk vocal groups (such as The Young Tradition) and the more complex, avant garde leanings of European modern classical music. (…) Both vocalists excel here and ‘Folk Song Cycles’ is very much an album of their voices, the accompanying instrumentation is subtle and serves to frame their words and inflections. Highly recommanded. » – Grey Malkin
Delphine Dora
Près Du Coeur Sauvage
(Wild Silence, 2015)
THE OUT:DOOR :
« There’s an indelible magic in music that traces seemingly-defined shapes, yet continually diverges from its own paths in small, crucial ways. Music like this never allows itself to settle despite often offering the comforting illusion of solidity, and more importantly it never allows the listener to relax even as it openly encourages them to. It’s the kind of music Delphine Dora makes, and on près du coeur sauvage she’s so thoroughly inside that zone between serenity and disquiet that at times it feels like she invented it.
That she manages to do this simply with her voice and her piano – plus a few subtle but important accents from field recordings – gives her songs an unsettlingly elemental aura. At times it’s as if she unearthed a cache of traditional children’s tunes that we all knew in a previous life, but in her hands they get a little warped, a little frayed, even a little frightening. She doesn’t even have to sing actual words for these tunes to burrow into the easily-vibrated parts of my brain, and when près du coeur sauvage really hits, it’s like my cortex is a tuning fork and Dora’s music is the best kind of hammer. »
– Marc Masters
AVANT MUSIC NEWS – AMN REVIEWS :
« Delphine Dora is a classically trained French pianist who plays as close to the wild heart you can get. (…) Discovering a piano in the wilderness, she tests a voice that hasn´t been used in centuries, inventing a new language to claim the land as far as it reaches. (…) Près du coeur sauvage is a kind of masterpiece in its sometimes off-key, very off-kilter insistence; a raw, chthonic, yet fair-complected folk music, old as mountains and unbeholden to any tectonic shift other than within its own, ancient soul. » – Stephen Fruitman
Delphine Dora
A Stream Of Consciousness
(Siren Wire, 2012)
INACTUELLES:
« A Stream of Consciousness, paru en 2011 chez Sirenwire Recordings, est un album de piano solo : de piano en liberté pure, quatorze plages d’oubli des cadres, des genres, dans une mouvance minimaliste très fluide. Le flot est rapide ou plus lent, toujours limpide, miroitant, léger. Il caresse, il dévale le temps, il caracole comme un cheval fou. C’est en effet un courant de conscience qui emporte, charrie à travers les espaces vides pour une ode démultipliée à l’infini – le premier morceau s’intitule « An Ode to Infinity », le second « Crowd vs Empty Spaces ». Cette manière de grouper les notes en grappes serrées n’est pas sans évoquer à certains moments les musiques orientales, notamment la musique chinoise, le piano remplaçant la cithare qîn. Comment ne pas penser aussi à un musicien comme Lubomyr Melnyk et à son piano en mode continu ? On flotte sur un océan, dont la surface est constamment agitée par des bulles qui viennent éclore à la lumière. Les notes se mélangent, tissent un réseau serré d’harmoniques. C’est une musique de plénitude heureuse, une pluie qui tombe des étoiles. «
DES CENDRES A LA CAVE :
« Tantôt calme, tantôt turbulent, le flux de notes tintinnabule vers une destination que Delphine Dora est bien la seule à connaître et on la suit les yeux fermés. Et peut-être qu’elle même ne sait pas très bien vers quoi elle nous emmène, découvrant le dessein au fur et à mesure qu’il sort de ses doigts en vagues ininterrompues mais qu’importe, lorsque l’on se retourne à la toute fin pour scruter le chemin parcouru, on ne peut qu’être soufflé par l’architecture ainsi dévoilée et son relief cabossé. Qu’ils soient simples clapotis ou martellements rugissants, ces agrégats de notes captivent insidieusement (…) »
Delphine Dora & Half Asleep
You’re Not Mad, You’re Just Lonely
(We Are Unique Records, 2012)
POP REVUE EXPRESS :
« En ce début d’année 2012, sortait un étrange disque né d’une collaboration entre Delphine Dora et le groupe belge Half Asleep, le tout pour le label We Are Unique Records.Une rencontre artistique entre deux univers bien marqués, entre deux styles musicaux originaux et très libres qui laissent beaucoup de place à l’improvisation, aux sonorités et aux bruits ambiants. Résultent de cette rencontre 13 titres étranges, que l’on croirait enregistrés dans un manoir avec comme seuls spectateurs des fantômes (ceux, peut-être, de la dramaturge Sarah Kane ou de Janet Frame) venus en curieux écouter cette musique faites de piano, de voix, de cris, des craquements, de sonorités d’instruments divers et harmonieusement assemblés. Ecrit, improvisé et enregistré en 5 jours « You’re not mad, you’re just lonely » est un disque brut et mélancolique, doux et rugueux, saisissant et troublant. Une vraie curiosité pour auditeurs curieux. »
Delphine Dora 