Gordon Grdina, François Houle, Kenton Loewen, Benoît Delbecq – Ghost Lights (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Gordon Grdina, François Houle, Kenton Loewen, Benoît Delbecq – Ghost Lights (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:24 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Songlines

Since 2014, the collective Grdina-Houle-Loewen has forged a new stream of complex compositions that meld together density, ferocious energy and technical virtuosity. The group’s versatility and wide dynamic range has become finely honed, creating an ensemble that can change course dramatically. The group just spent some time at Afterlife Studios in July 2016, recording a set of quartet music with French pianist Benoît Delbecq, that been released by Songlines Records in the spring of 2017.

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Benoît Delbecq – The Weight of Light (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Benoît Delbecq - The Weight of Light (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Benoît Delbecq – The Weight of Light (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:57 minutes | 932 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Pyroclastic Records

The header on Delbecq’s website reads undocile jazz beats and more. Perhaps the most prominent characteristic of his music is the textured sound he makes with his prepared piano, changing its tone using dried wood and erasers and any other materials he can find and insert between the strings to alter the sound. In this tune, “Anamorphoses,” you can hear how the sound of the piano has been altered. And all the sounds that you hear, the buzzing, the knocking, it’s all from the piano. It’s all Delbecq all by himself.
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Benoit Delbecq – Nu-Turn (2003/2012) DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Benoit Delbecq – Nu-Turn (2003/2012)
DSD64 (.dsf) 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 63:46 minutes | 2,51 GB
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 63:46 minutes | 1,22 GB
Genre: Jazz | Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: ProStudioMasters | Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines Recordings

Benoît Delbecq is a uniquely gifted French pianist who has created his own music using ideas and techniques from contemporary classical jazz, Pygmy polyphony and European improvisation. He prepares the piano with various materials such as eraser bits and carved wooden twigs and improvises on short, overlapping vamps and patterns; the result is a complex, spacious sound that hardly seems to be emanating from a single instrument. On Nu-turn, his debut solo release from 2003, Delbecq stretches out on eight astonishingly structured improvisations; the final 11 minute composition is a computer-created ambient “remix” that completely transforms the material.

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Benoit Delbecq – The Sixth Jump (2010) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Benoit Delbecq - The Sixth Jump (2010) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Benoit Delbecq – The Sixth Jump (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:00 minutes | 991 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines

The Sixth Jump is the first trio release from French pianist Benoît Delbecq, released in tandem with a companion solo album on which Delbecq deconstructs some of the same songs he interprets here with the trio. This recording features intense yet supple polyrhythmic improvisations built up in interlocking layers and cycles, woven together with the bass and drums and a distinctive melodic/tonal sense that balances consonance and dissonance with timbral shifts in many intriguing ways. The Sixth Jump was named one of the 12 best records of 2010 (“Choc de l’année”) by Jazzman, the leading jazz magazine in France.

… amplifies his skills as an empathic leader whose inventive thematic explorations are woven in spontaneous interaction with his mates. The result is music that tantalizes and teases as it vents its way to an appealing resolution.
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Benoit Delbecq – Nu-turn (2003) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Benoit Delbecq - Nu-turn (2003) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Benoit Delbecq – Nu-turn (2003)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:03:36 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines

Though he has been one of the avatars of prepared piano for over a decade, Benoit Delbecq has only now released a solo album. Nu-Turn (Songlines) is well worth the long wait, a strikingly well-defined recording featuring an immaculate Steinway D piano. Throughout the album, Delbecq’s affinity for African and Asian folk music (which is most vividly evident in the timbres created by his driftwood preparations, which suggest indigenous percussion and string instruments) and his Paul Bley-derived lyricism and floating pulse constantly dovetail about one another. This accentuates the exotic, mysterious qualities of Delbecq’s music that, in the past, have been tempered in other settings. Propelled by a cool attack, the music lingers in the air like incense, pungent but not overwhelming. Nu-Turn is an excellent way to become familiar with one of the most distinctive pianists on the international scene.
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Benoit Delbecq – Fun House (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Benoit Delbecq - Fun House (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Benoit Delbecq – Fun House (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 51:59 minutes | 897 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines

This rare double trio configuration brings together two pianists, two bassists and two drummers; the result is a multi-faceted collaboration with opportunities for various combinations of duos and trios as well as full group interaction. The music has its moments of abstraction, its moonlit soundscapes, but also embraces a jazzier aesthetic on the Monkish/Lacyish Night for Day. The two fantastic pianists who sparked this 2013 release, both winners of the Grand Prix du Disque for jazz, are Fred Hersch and Benoît Delbecq. In 2008 Hersch attended one of Delbecq’s gigs in New York. Mutual fans who wanted to work together on something “novel and a bit outrageous,” Delbecq came up with the idea of a double trio.
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Benoit Delbecq – Dice Thrown (2002) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Benoit Delbecq - Dice Thrown (2002) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

Benoit Delbecq – Dice Thrown (2002)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 53:20 minutes | 994 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines

Five years after their first collaboration, French pianist Benoit Delbecq and Canadian clarinetist François Houle team up on this 2002 release which features pieces for piano or prepared piano and clarinets (sometimes two played simultaneously) and a solo improvisation by each musician. Composition and improvisation flow together into a dreamlike continuum where jazz and new music intersect.

The sound Francois Houle gets from his clarinet is so beautiful you wish you could squirrel it away, hide it from your friends, so you can have it all to yourself. Houle’s lovely tone is in full force here … (his) sound folds rather well into Delbecq’s abstract, airy and rarefied style … their duets are filled with playful, coy unison lines and melodies that are as fresh and sharp as a mint.
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Benoit Delbecq – Circles And Calligrams (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Benoit Delbecq - Circles And Calligrams (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Benoit Delbecq – Circles And Calligrams (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:57 minutes | 969 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines

This solo piano album from French musician Benoît Delbecq offers a career summary while continuing to advance and refine his particular approach. Celebrated in France and named “one of the avatars of the prepared piano” by JazzTimes.com, his music requires an open mind toward sonic experimentation as well as an appreciation for formal complexity and a degree of abstraction. The title Circles and Calligrams refers to the visual patterns Delbecq sketches with pen and paper while writing new pieces, designs that help him visualize ways of superimposing forms and building up “fabrics” of various motifs.
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Benoit Delbecq – Because She Hoped (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Benoit Delbecq - Because She Hoped (2011) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Benoit Delbecq – Because She Hoped (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:43 minutes | 935 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Songlines

French pianist Benoît Delbecq and Vancouver-based clarinetist François Houle team up on this 2011 release, their third collaboration, which showcases these two distinctive composer-performers whose work together has its own very particular synergy. It’s striking how serene yet playful much of the music feels, reflecting how two old friends went about reinventing their musical relationship for a few hours in the studio (and on a subsequent short tour) after a rather long hiatus.
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Serge Adam, Benoit Delbecq, Philippe Foch – Les amants de Juliette s’electrolysent (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Serge Adam, Benoit Delbecq, Philippe Foch – Les amants de Juliette s’electrolysent (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 00:37:26 minutes | 450 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Qobuz | @ Quoi de neuf docteur

Depuis l’automne 1993, LES AMANTS DE JULIETTE pratiquent une musique dont l’essence est née du désir de tourner les oreilles vers les cultures traditionnelles lointaines. La trompette, omniprésente dans l’histoire du Jazz, tient seule ici le rôle du chant. Les tablas évoquent l’Inde et ses traditions musicales millénaires. Les percussions n’ont plus d’âge. Le piano préparé avec des résonateurs évoque la richesse des mélodies de timbres de l’Indonésie, mais aussi la polyrythmie propre au continent africain. LES AMANTS DE JULIETTE ont choisi d’entreprendre un voyage musical hors du commun. Aujourd’hui, les outils numériques rendent possible une proposition de matière nouvelle, traitée en temps réel, qui va nourrir le jeu collectif. Ici, pas de boucles ni de séquences préenregistrées, chaque musicien développe sa propre syntaxe au sein de l’improvisation collective. Guidés par la recherche des confrontations de timbres, modes de jeu, phrasés, par les rapports et traitements possibles des sources acoustiques et électroniques, ils créent sur la trame de l’oeuvre écrite un temps singulier, une proposition d’un nouvel univers et une invitation à la transe. Après une première expérimentation à la Parenthèse et à l’Alizé à Avignon en 2006 et 2008, nouvelle création le 30 Août 2014 au Festival Jazz Métis à Montreuil.

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