Tachycardie Vinyl, CD & Tape 3 Items

Fortified by his collective experiences as a drummer and percussionist on the margins of free rock and improvisation - in Pneu, Papaye, Binidu or La Colonie de Vacances - Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy imagined Tachycardie, a project in which he initiates a paradoxically complex and raw vibratory art where rhythms and drones are born from matter and objects.

For his third disc under his fluttering pseudonym, Geoffroy blurs the lines between compositions/improvisations and field recordings and invites us to prick up our ears in a process of extended listening offering panoramic pieces. These nine practices are so many acousmatic rituals in a semi-natural environment conceived as sound tracking shots which can be listened to as one would apprehend a landscape and its different planes: electro-acoustic panoramas in perspective, at sometimes moderate volume, which invite an increased attention or, on the contrary, a more global listening to atmospheres. It seems that blurring the tracks between what he proposes to hear and the freedom of perception offered to the listener matters to Geoffroy in this compromise between rustic concrete music and rhythmic bas-reliefs played in a crooked way under the shed.

This collection of six pieces brings together nine practices, in formats ranging from a little over two to seven minutes. They function as so many vignettes of "Cinema for the ear" where the little naturalist stories, which we imagine taking place at nightfall, merge with the miniatures of domestic experimental music combining almost fortuitous rhythms and frequencies. The rustling of fauna and flora welcome with open arms the fragile and gently dissonant sounds of Geoffroy. Over the course of the practices, the elements of field recordings seem to integrate the vast palette of the sound director. The pieces thus take on more composed, dense and dynamic turns; we no longer know which of the dog or the synthesizer is barking, whether it's the wind blowing or sticks scratching driftwood, and we marvel at believing everything these concrete, sometimes absurd nursery rhymes tell us.

Three years after Probables, the first discographic manifestation of Tachycardie, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy continues to wander between acousmatic music, minimalism (Tachycardie Ensemble), field recordings and fake traditional music, following a most elusive trajectory. Competing in purity in his sound approach with the picky Ralf Wehowsky, Bernhard Günter, or even Thomas Köner, Geoffroy also maintains a resolutely physical relationship to sound that brings him closer to his peers (-cussionists) Will Guthrie or Eli Keszler. Despite these somewhat futile attempts at filiation, Tachycardie remains, somewhere in Touraine, one of the most exciting living anomalies in experimental music.

Autonomie Minérale is the apex of a triptych that sprang up in less than three years. There is nothing fortuitous about this name, “Tachycardie.”

After Probables (2019) and Sommé-e (2020) his previous intuitions have developed into goldsmithery: this piece resulted from the alloying and balancing of the mechanical oscillation of a stone that is hit, stricken, and the electronic oscillation of a home-made synthesiser. Thus, no one can tell where synthesis starts and where sonic naturalism ends. Tachycardie is therefore a game of chaos where chance looms large, as usual with the way things are, from the commonest to the most beautiful of all things. A stone like a windfall, somehow.

Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, musician, composer but also visual artist, continues his very singular journey to the heart of sound matter, with an album composed on Baschet sound structures. From the 1950s, the Baschet brothers created a truly innovative set of instruments which has since fascinated musicians seeking new sound experiences. Both sculptures of glass, metal and instruments of great acoustic sharpness, these sound structures have made rare but remarkable forays into recordings of contemporary music (Bernard Baschet, Jacques Lasry, Luc Ferrari..)