Quentin Sirjacq: Companion
Schole

Companion, Quentin Sirjacq's fourth solo album, finds the French artist in a seeming state of transformation. Certainly its eight pieces are identifiable as Sirjacq creations, yet they also show him testing out new directions, and consequently the impression forms of a restless artist content with what he's done before but also wanting to advance beyond it. No one would have imagined, for example, a Sirjacq production that suggests ties to Plastikman, of all things, yet a late sequence in the opening track, “Variations,” does exactly that.

The difference between Companion and what's come before shouldn't be overexaggerated, however. Like the new release, his 2016 album, Far Islands and Near Places, augments his piano with marimbas, vibraphone, glockenspiel, and synthesizers, and just as others contributed to that earlier album, so too are there guests on the new one. Julien Loutelier, Vincent Taurelle, Arnaud Lassus, and Steve Argüelles appear, and the fact that three of the four beef up the material's percussion quotient speaks to the album's increased emphasis on rhythm. The result is a heady fusion that blends melodic classical music with techno, electronic music, and American minimalism. In this instance, the tracks are less songs than travelogues that guide the listener through numerous connecting scenes.

After an intro that spotlights Sirjacq's trademark piano elegance, the aptly titled “Variations” progresses through multiple parts as other instruments join in. With Taurelle fleshing out the arrangement with synthesizers, Argüelles and Lassus nudge the music into a minimalism direction with conga and marimba, after which the slap of Loutelier's drum machine snare and the tinkle of Lassus's glockenspiel recasts the piece as an acid techno-minimalism hybrid. Coming down from that epic head-spinner, “Carol” initially cools the pace for a characteristically graceful meditation heavy on acoustic piano and synthesizers before morphing into a lilting, percussion-heavy reverie intensified by marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, and drums.

“Dance” nods in Four Organs' direction with sounds of maracas and electric keyboard (Sirjacq on Fender Rhodes), and then builds on that foundation with clockwork mallet patterns straight from the Reich handbook. Emblematic of Sirjacq's sensibility and writing style, the wistful title track works whistling by Abel Sirjacq into its soothing presentation. Two more surprises arrive when “Harmonium” overlays a droning base with fluttering synth effects and “Choral” accompanies epic synth washes with rubato drumming by both Argüelles and Loutelier. The only track featuring Sirjacq solo is “Will You Be There,” a becalmed piano-and-synths lullaby whose simple patterns invite comparison to one of Eno's own pretty miniatures.

March 2019