London-based French composer Angèle David-Guillou makes audacious music that explores the interaction between rhythm and melody, structure and emotion, permanence and change. Her work is one of incessant dialogue between these elements, creating hypnotic compositions whose mutable internal architecture and shifting melodic accentuations immediately draw the listener in, while constantly, almost imperceptibly, disorienting auditory perception. It’s a compositional process that is central to the eight compelling essays on the aptly titled ‘En Mouvement’, David-Guillou’s new album, the second under her given name.
Informed by a rich and eclectic tapestry of cultural stimuli, including Philip Glass’s ‘Glassworks’, the music for movement of Thomas De Hartmann and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, Alvin Curran's compositions for the piano, French and Spanish Baroque music, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Jean Cocteau, Sufi writings, Sumerian art and contemporary dance, the pieces on ‘En Mouvement’ are the work of a reflective, intellectually engaged yet delightfully instinctive modern composer who has made the limitless mutability implied by the concept of ‘movement’ a thing of personal transformation and mesmeric musicality.
“Very early on in the process of working on the compositions for this album, the idea of ‘movement’ became my central point of focus,” David-Guillou confirms. “The word seemed to encapsulate all my obsessions. En mouvement literally means ‘in motion’, but the word in French, as in English, is extremely rich and suggests an array of ideas such as motion, gesture, dance, musical parts, clockwork, repetition, displacement, emotional confusion or excitement. In fact, I realise now that this concept has been present ever since I started listening to and making music; I just hadn’t quite understood how important it was to me.”
With her second album of modern composition, Angèle David-Guillou’s career is palpably en movement and, excitingly, it feels like the beginning of a long and thrillingly creative musical journey.
Informed by a rich and eclectic tapestry of cultural stimuli, including Philip Glass’s ‘Glassworks’, the music for movement of Thomas De Hartmann and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, Alvin Curran's compositions for the piano, French and Spanish Baroque music, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Jean Cocteau, Sufi writings, Sumerian art and contemporary dance, the pieces on ‘En Mouvement’ are the work of a reflective, intellectually engaged yet delightfully instinctive modern composer who has made the limitless mutability implied by the concept of ‘movement’ a thing of personal transformation and mesmeric musicality.
“Very early on in the process of working on the compositions for this album, the idea of ‘movement’ became my central point of focus,” David-Guillou confirms. “The word seemed to encapsulate all my obsessions. En mouvement literally means ‘in motion’, but the word in French, as in English, is extremely rich and suggests an array of ideas such as motion, gesture, dance, musical parts, clockwork, repetition, displacement, emotional confusion or excitement. In fact, I realise now that this concept has been present ever since I started listening to and making music; I just hadn’t quite understood how important it was to me.”
With her second album of modern composition, Angèle David-Guillou’s career is palpably en movement and, excitingly, it feels like the beginning of a long and thrillingly creative musical journey.