Biography
What and who are Elan 16?
After several years spent in Paris as a guitarist in various groups, the Elan 16 project (Elancèze!) was a way to express musically the synthesis of my multiple exposures to powerful musical influences. The latter are numerous, and pay homage to them:
Comus, Magma, Tycho, Colour Haze, Al di Meola, Brian Eno, Jannick Top, Devin Townsend, William Basinski, Carpe Diem, Ill Wicker, Sigur Ros, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Arco Iris, Agitation free, Harold Budd, Cream, Fuchsia, Gong, King Crimson, Penderecki, Philip Glass, Masters of reality, Ash Ra, Captain Beyond, King’s X, Touch…
During the 90′, a first “concept album” (Autour des cités obscures) had been at the heart of my musical research, supported by other instrumentalists, to illustrate the extraordinary graphic work of Schuiten and Peeters. It was a blank page that I wanted, in the same way, but free of the organisational constraints of the collective.
The first Elan 16 album was composed in Isafjordur, with limited nomadic stuff.
I travelled in the least populated places of the planet that were the birth place of the first notes of this project which carries no political statement but is based on two axioms: on the one hand the primacy of nature and its contemplation and on the other, the dramatic observation of its deterioration by man whose growth and development on Earth constitute a major scourge.
The fourth album (Le sable du temps) was a parenthesis in homage to the disappearance of Henri Giriat whose essential texts will remain like a star in the dark, for centuries…
This music, composed in quietness, with few resources and without any technical pretension, is free to listen to on various platforms (Bandcamp, Soundcloud). May she entertain some ears that chance would lead them to, drowned in the vastness of todays sounds in the modern world.
This music is voluntarily instrumental.
Here, however, and by way of conclusion, some lines of a french text (difficult to translate…) that can bring focus to the music :
Gésir
enseveli sous les sables du sommeil.
Là ton corps étendu a perdu tout regard.
Disparue l’ombre que je fus
et que je suis sans plus savoir.
Que feras-tu là-bas outre songe
et jusqu’à l’aube
où le silence s’éprendra de la ramure des arbres.
Mère profonde, sagesse nocturne.
La nescience – origine recèle en elle
jusqu’au secret des nébuleuses.
A l’éveil peut-être et par quelque chance
tu en auras recueilli
l’ombre passante sur ton visage.
Henri Giriat, Droit Désir