Barely a year and a half later Heavy Sun, an openly gospel album, the Canadian Daniel Lanois offers an all-instrumental album in which he plays… the piano. The acclaimed singer-songwriter and director is once again showing up where we least expected him, this time on the side of more minimalist and intimate music.
Posted at 5:00 p.m.
If there is on player, piano some hints of the research he did with Brian Eno in the 1980s on the side of ambient music, this album remains essentially one of soft sounds, rocking melodies and ethereal atmospheres.
With his co-producer Wayne Lorenz, the musician tampered with the hammers and strings of the pianos he played on to give them a softer, muffled resonance, as if the instruments had come directly from another era, less cacophonous and noisy than the our. The result is enveloping and soothing, sometimes disturbingly beautiful because it stirs. But Lanois being Lanois, it was certainly out of the question for him to deliver a linear album. Each piece is a universe in itself, we go on the side of jazz or on the side of Satie, and there are as many electronic rhythms as echo or vaporous sound effects.
The journey is soaring, but not boring, moving and luminous, as timeless as it is rooted, and above all rich and deep. When the guide’s name is Daniel Lanois, it’s not so surprising.
Instrumental
player, piano
Daniel Lanois
Modern Recordings/BMG