“I worry about repeating myself
”.
Parle, grand canard
, Mocke's third album, results from an injunction that the French guitarist made to himself: break his habits.
Surveyor of avant-garde French pop, Dominique Dépret, whose real name is, has his ears turned to jazz, of which he is crazy, rock, oriental or contemporary music.
It is rightly praised by the critics for this abundance.
For twenty years, he has played the songwriter of sweet songs for feu-Holden and Midget !, the disheveled accompanist for Mohamed Lamouri, Arlt or Chevalrex and the improviser keen on abstraction with Delphine Dora.
Parle grand canard
gives the floor to an octet of strings and blowers, a first for him.
This strange “little symphony” crowns a creative penchant that has increased tenfold since his adventure in false solo.
Before
L'anguille
(2014) and
St-homard
(2016), Mocke "
only thought [in] terms of songs and couldn't get enough of this framework
".
The two collections of radiant psychedelia instrumentals put the guitar at the center, in a new space of partly improvised experimentation.
If he found writing again with
Parle grand canard
, it was for fear that improvisation would make him go around in circles.
The only consistency is that it is always expressed in the margins.
“
Little by little, I wanted it to come apart, for it to fall apart,
” he explains.
Rather melodist, he gave himself a hard time for this new chapter of his personal odyssey.
An emotional journey
What is your journey,
the 16-minute opening song, was recorded in a Radio France studio.
It concentrates the essence of an album made of amazing movements, between an avant-garde aesthetic and sometimes perky classical music (Janáček, Shostakovich, Britten).
He transfigures them with his elusive claw.
But if he is keen on "
rather austere abstract music
", Mocke always ensures that it is mastered with "
fun
" and humor.
Parle grand duck also
answers the following question: "
How do you make sure that it gets richer all the time without it being too rich?"
".
This is where Mocke's sense of balance and dramaturgy comes into play, in these imaginary landscapes carried by movement and catchy melodies (a gift to him).
It feels like a western, with distant musical library echoes and Irish accents.
Mocke knows how to take the listener on board and surprise him in the same gesture, between repetition and difference.
For
What is your background?
, he explains that he wanted
"to compose a fairly simple and rather melodious theme, a very accessible leitmotif that (he) could (t) decline in different ways, over the reharmonizations".
In this piece that looks like a manifesto, the instruments intersect like so many characters carrying a discourse and ruptures.
Off the beaten track
But the only words are in the titles.
Funny, intriguing, they reveal Mocke's spiritual poetry.
Autrui est un concept,
for example, evokes its failed encounter with psychoanalysis.
My name is circulating at the ministry, using
word for word a sentence spoken by one of her friends.
Mocke plays with offsets, always having fun being nearby.
He conceives, for example,
Buffala is an idiom
like jazz which is not.
"
As in
Lost Highway
of
David Lynch
,
where jazz piece is a travesty of jazz, the nightmare of a recurring scene
," he compares.
This album brews wide, but it remains a playful testimony to erudite music.
He is "
neither jazz nor pop
", excludes Mocke, who prefers side roads.
Like when he plays jazz pianist Thelonious Monk's repertoire every day on classical guitar, like a good convict of pleasure, without knowing yet what he will do with it.
He, the claimed melodist immerses himself in the work of one of the few "
capable of combining dissonance and light
".
A master of rhythm that Mocke will hopefully bring back to him on a future record.
In the meantime, "
that inspires [him]
."
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