Emile Parisien Quartet – Let Them Cook (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 56:15 minutes | 1,10 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music
When accidents happen, they are normally over in seconds, sometimes minutes; this one has been going on for 20 years. It is two decades since the members of Emile Parisien’s quartet played a jam session together. At the end, they looked at each other in disbelief. They had not just been hit by a collective musical thunderbolt, they also knew they had just brought…well…something…into being. The common ground between them was jazz, but each had all kinds of seeds to sow in it, from classical music and contemporary sounds to rock, electronica and chanson. Saxofonist Emile Parisien, Pianist Julien Touéry, Bassist Ivan Gélugne and drummer Julien Loutelier rip up labels, break down barriers, upset codes, and yet they know exactly where they are headed. There is a shared obsession with narrative. “The central axis of the quartet has always been storytelling,” Parisien emphasizes.
Read moreEmile Parisien Quartet – Spezial Snack (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 46:39 minutes | 297 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music
This quartet is the heir to those experimenters who opened wide the windows onto codified genres, both in music and elsewhere. The group hasn’t plundered their aesthetic, but transposed their approach onto our own, ultra-referenced time. It has chosen the most radical path, and is our indispensable contemporary.
Read moreEmile Parisien Quartet – Double Screening (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 51:31 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ACT Music
Album after album, Emile Parisien refines his self-portrait. He adds some shades. Erases others. And whatever the formation, context or repertoire, the saxophonist maintains his song, his voice and his own immediately identifiable style… Throughout his wide repertoire, the pieces that he has conceived with his quartet (for more than a decade) have always occupied a special place. With pianist Julien Touéry, double bassist Ivan Gélugne and, as a new recruit, drummer Julien Loutelier, Parisien leads this improvisation that touches on the sublime and is ever surprising. With his virtuosity he could have simply stuck to what is conventional. But that word doesn’t resonate with him. Every second of Double Screening explores new territories. He is one of the few saxophonists of his generation to alternate between lyricism and libertarianism in the snap of the finger. Going from laughter to tears is not a paradox in the universe of Emile Parisien’s quartet. It is simply its raison d’être. And, in the end, a way to offer a type of jazz that is more organic than cerebral. – Marc Zisman
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