Gilles Poizat releases new album ‘Champignon flamme’

French artist Gilles Poizat has released his stunning trumpet & modular synth-based album ‘Champignon flamme’ via Carton Records.

Gilles Poizat is a musician and songwriter born in 1967 in Lyon. After classical trumpet studies and a PhD in ecology, he led a double life between scientific research and music. Among striking meetings in Arles, Lyon and Conakry, Mazalda triggered his plunge into music. He began to sing, to write, revisited his teenage guitar, discovered elementary electronics, and relearns trumpet every day. Always attracted by new vivid experiences, he draws his own path and delivers atypical albums: ‘Micro-vertige et l’expérience du flottement,’ ‘Rev Galen’ (with Catherine Hershey), ‘Horse in the house,’ and ‘Champignon flamme’.

About ‘Champignon flamme’

The music of ‘Champignon flamme’ was originally recorded from fall 2018 to spring 2019 as preliminary research for ‘La séance,’ a choreographic piece by Benjamin Coyle (Cie Kopfkino) which finally focussed on songwriting. Then, this instrumental material, trumpet and electronics, became an autonomous album. It questions the invisible, intimate rituals and personal relationships with our dead.

Each track starts from a peculiar electronic set-up which reacts and uses the sound of the trumpet lively to generate sounds from electronic treatments and analogue synthesis. Sounds emitted by the set-up roll and modulate over time in a more or less random way. Trumpet playing is improvised in this unpredictable and interactive soundscape. Sometimes from the trumpet only remains its imprint. All electronic sounds are played live, no overdubs, except in the last track, Lignes de fuite.

‘Champignon flamme’ is Gilles’ first instrumental solo album. He reconnects here with his first instrument, the trumpet, meanwhile augmenting it with a new one, the modular synthesizer.