An inspiring album that dissolves the boundary that too often separates live and studio, improvisation and composition.
"I have known Quentin since 1998, when I first went to Paris and played with Noël Akchoté, who was the other half of the Rectangle label with Quentin. We went to the same parties and knew the same people, but somehow never played together. We have both known and followed each other's work for 20 years now, so it was pretty easy on this album, for us both to do our thing at the same time, and somehow it fitted. Perhaps because it has our own separate histories inside it, which have been loosely connected—socially, if not musically—for some 20+ years.
This album was made remotely under COVID lockdown in 2020. All Quentin's saxophone parts were recorded in a studio in Paris, he sent them to me and I put them together with my electronics at home in the countryside in North UK. But most of it sounds as if it was recorded live, with us playing together in the same room. I have always liked this kind of ambiguity – what's live/improvised vs what's edited/written that you spend days or weeks over. This record has both, but you can't really see the joins. Working under lockdown, when you have no way of seeing the other person, or even being in the same country, it makes the whole idea of 'live' vs ' studio', made vs played irrelevant. That's an interesting place to be."
Andrew Sharpley
Quentin Rollet (born 1974) started playing the alto saxophone at the age of 11 and the sopranino saxophone at 37. After a few years spent unlearning the teaching of the conservatory, he devoted himself solely to free improvisation. This led him to play on record or on stage with groups as varied as
Nurse With Wound, Prohibition, The Red Krayola, Mendelson,
David Grubbs, Herman Dune,
Akosh S. Unit,
Thierry Müller, Rubin Steiner,
eRikm,
Jac Berrocal,
Andrew Liles, Bästard, Ulan Bator,
Costes,
Red,
Melmac, Dragibus, Phoebe Killdeer & The Short Straws,
Jérôme Lorichon,
Charlie O, Dan-Charles Dahan, Zsolt Söres, Pal Toth, Jean-Noël Cognard, Jean-Pierre Barja, Rivkah, Benoît de Villeneuve...... He is a member of
Pointe du Lac, and the co-founder of the labels
Rectangle (with
Noël Akchoté),
reQords and
Bisou Records.
A figure of the British underground, founding member of Stock, Hausen & Walkman, a duo active in the 1990s and famous for its sound collages and witty wordplay, Andrew Sharpley has been equally renowned for his other musical projects, such as Dummy Run, æ or Mami Chan Band. With Noël Akchoté (and Erik Minkkinen of Sister Iodine), he released in 2001 the album Rien, a deconstructivist and improvised rereading of Ornette Coleman.
