Dunckel, JB & Jonathan Fitoussi: Mirages LP

Jean-Benoît Dunckel of AIR and Jonathan Fitoussi (audio restoration engineer at GRM) develop their collaboratiuon at Xavier Veilhan’s Studio Venezia at the 57th Venice Biennale, completing the recordings at Jean-Benoit’s studio in Paris.

As the Parisians’ first collaboration, ‘Mirages’ finds Fitoussi and Dunckel curving away from prior, respective solo vectors into meditative synth music and meticulous synth-pop to arrive at a mutual conclusion of softly-played, star-eyed electronics realised between Xavier Veilhan’s Studio Venezia - the French Pavilion during the 2017 Vencie Biennale - and Studio Atlas at home in Paris.

One for country day-tripping in the sun, as well as watching the stars come out at night, ‘Mirages’ works its magick with all the slow subtlety one might imagine from a member of AIR, while Fitoussi’s avant-experimental leanings lend it a more inventive, spaced-out breeze of lush, lysergic possibility and vulnerability.

“Synthesizers amassed through the years, which on this album, conceived with precision and care over the course of one year, reveal their essence – and more importantly, their soul, going from very cinematographic parts to very direct others.

Between start and finish, a singular floating and inventive pop music unfolds. An upgraded form of instrumental electronic music, that takes the listener very far, and very high, perfectly mixing both musicians world, like fruitful pictures arisen from a desert that forgot to be arid.

Their mirages are inventive, their mirages are fertile.”