Laurent Pernice - Antigone CD Alma de Nieto catalog number DNN 039C

 

Laurent Pernice, is an atypical musician, who comes from the great cold of industrial music. He seems equally at with electronic music, stage music, film music or even world music. The music on Sophocles’ Antigone (Theatre play by Anima Motrix) , which released on CD on the Italian label ADN (which had already released the music for Corps Utopique, in 2022) is his twentieth album. And that's not  counting the many albums he has contributed to, such as those by Palo Alto, an equally atypical group with close ties to science fiction literature. After an extreme exploration of wind  instruments from all over the world (hulusi, khen, rhadong, cromorne or moceño) for Le Corps Utopique, Laurent Pernice is now tackling strings. And especially the viola of Violaine Sutan, a teacher at the Marseille Conservatory of Music, who was willing to play along with the composer's penchant for experimentation. The sound of her instrument, while sometimes very clear and simple, interpreting melodies of a elegant beauty akin to that of classical music, is often turned on its head, slowed down, overdriven, to create textures conducive to the atmosphere of this or that part of the play. It is in these experiments that the music of Antigone breaks away from purely illustrative music to become a personal album in its own right by Laurent Pernice. Instrumentally, he takes an active part in the performance, playing bass, double bass, zither and harp himself... At times reminiscent of the atmospheres created by John Lurie for Jim Jarmusch's film Stranger Than Paradise, the tracks on the CD follow one another to build a kind of abstract narrative, as if to recreate the continuity of Sophocles' play without the text. They take you on a journey of an absolute tragedy, while revealing the infinite complexity of the human being.