Composed and mixed in Paris, Château Rouge by Alexandre Bazin
Photograph by João Castro - The Royal Studio
Cassette edition limited - released on Important Records (IMPREC 525)
Therapy is an experimental electronic album shaped by a long and solitary process, rooted in sonic exploration and emotional intensity. It moves along the blurred edges of ambient music, while allowing fragments of melody and harmony to resurface through dense textures and saturated layers.
At the heart of the album lies a subtle orchestral presence, stretched and reconfigured through electronics. The sound palette draws from acoustic origins, yet remains elusive — abstracted, eroded, transformed. Saturation is not used as an effect, but as a compositional gesture: it compresses time, blurs contours, and reveals hidden resonances.
The first two tracks, composed earlier for a live performance at Gaîté Lyrique in 2022, offer a more direct focus on analog synthesis. They stand apart in their instrumentation — the first built entirely on the EMS Synthi A, the second on the Buchla Music Easel — but resonate with the same sense of inner tension and fragile lyricism that runs through the whole album.
Therapy is not about catharsis. It’s a form of sonic introspection — intimate, unresolved, and open-ended.
At the heart of the album lies a subtle orchestral presence, stretched and reconfigured through electronics. The sound palette draws from acoustic origins, yet remains elusive — abstracted, eroded, transformed. Saturation is not used as an effect, but as a compositional gesture: it compresses time, blurs contours, and reveals hidden resonances.
The first two tracks, composed earlier for a live performance at Gaîté Lyrique in 2022, offer a more direct focus on analog synthesis. They stand apart in their instrumentation — the first built entirely on the EMS Synthi A, the second on the Buchla Music Easel — but resonate with the same sense of inner tension and fragile lyricism that runs through the whole album.
Therapy is not about catharsis. It’s a form of sonic introspection — intimate, unresolved, and open-ended.
- Oceans - Respire
- Oceans - Swell
- Oceans - Rising Seas
- Oceans - Underwater
- The Deserter
- Dream-Land "On A Black Throne Reigns Upright" (Part 1)
- Dream-Land "Mountains Toppling Evermore Into Seas Without A shore" (Part 2)
- Dream-Land "There The Traveller Meets Memories Of The Past" (Part 3)
- Dream-Land "By A Route Obscure And Lonely" (Part 4)
︎︎︎ Marimba: Gabriel Benlolo (tracks 1 to 4 ) / A. Bazin (tracks 3, 4)
Released on Important Records (Cassauna)
“Swell tape by this current member of Paris’s GRM organisation. Both pieces are suites using the Buchla Music Easel as their primary sound engine, and its tone (mixed with piano and marimba on one side, electronic organ on the flip) is rich and texturally complex. The sounds range from classic Pierre Schaeffer-like collisions of whacked-out sound waves to saturnine insect buzzing and even stretches that are qite proggy. Excellent ! “
The Wire Magazine
This piece borrows its title from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, drawing inspiration from the spectral and evocative worlds he conjured. In the spirit of the GRM’s acousmatic tradition, it echoes works such as L’Enfer by Bernard Parmegiani or Suite pour Edgar Poe by Guy Reibel. The composition unfolds like an imaginary narrative, sculpted in sound rather than words — an abstract drama where textures, spaces, and spectral voices replace characters and plot.
The Wire Magazine
This piece borrows its title from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, drawing inspiration from the spectral and evocative worlds he conjured. In the spirit of the GRM’s acousmatic tradition, it echoes works such as L’Enfer by Bernard Parmegiani or Suite pour Edgar Poe by Guy Reibel. The composition unfolds like an imaginary narrative, sculpted in sound rather than words — an abstract drama where textures, spaces, and spectral voices replace characters and plot.
Percussion-Résonance takes its name from the legacy of musique concrète, rooted in the work of Pierre Schaeffer and later explored by Bernard Parmegiani in his landmark piece *De Natura Sonorum*. But rather than paying homage, this album seeks to revisit and rethink those early ideas through today’s sonic tools and sensibilities.
Using the Buchla Music Easel, EMS Synthi, and Mutable Instruments, the pieces explore how rhythm, texture, and resonance interact , often folding into one another. The sound world blurs the boundary between gesture and memory, between synthesized tones and something almost physical. Concepts like the *objet sonore* and acousmatic listening are subtly reimagined here, not as academic references but as living principles, guiding the ear toward new ways of hearing.
Composed and mixed in Paris, Château Rouge by Alexandre Bazin
Artwork by João Castro - The Royal Studio
Cassette edition limited - released on Important Records (Cassauna)
“A wonderfully atmospheric exercise in ambient minimalism from Alexandre Bazin for Important Records as he lights the route, smoothes the path & leaves a tempting tonal trail to the warm & welcoming end of the rocky world of experimental electronics”
The Slow Music Movement
“GRM's Alexandre Bazin uses the Buchla Music Easel and EMS Synthi on "Percussion-Resonance" to experiment with rhythmic electronics in the mode of Carsten Nicolai, Ryoji Ikeda or Frank Bretschneider.
The title of Bazin's latest full-length is a reference to the musique concrète that emerged from the GRM developed by Pierre Schaeffer and refined later by Bernard Parmegiani. And while Bazin doesn't exactly make musique concrète, it's clear that these concepts - as well as records like "De Natura Sonorum" - are at the front of his mind as he builds fluctuating neon-flicker'd vignettes out of deep sub bass tones, solemn strings and electrical glitches.
"Percussion-Resonance" isn't a million miles from Alva Noto's more recent work - particularly his emotionally-charged "xerrox" volumes - but Bazin sets himself apart by focusing more urgently on the sound's open-skied potential, suggesting a universe of stars and humming electromagnetic sound.”
BOOMKAT
The Slow Music Movement
“GRM's Alexandre Bazin uses the Buchla Music Easel and EMS Synthi on "Percussion-Resonance" to experiment with rhythmic electronics in the mode of Carsten Nicolai, Ryoji Ikeda or Frank Bretschneider.
The title of Bazin's latest full-length is a reference to the musique concrète that emerged from the GRM developed by Pierre Schaeffer and refined later by Bernard Parmegiani. And while Bazin doesn't exactly make musique concrète, it's clear that these concepts - as well as records like "De Natura Sonorum" - are at the front of his mind as he builds fluctuating neon-flicker'd vignettes out of deep sub bass tones, solemn strings and electrical glitches.
"Percussion-Resonance" isn't a million miles from Alva Noto's more recent work - particularly his emotionally-charged "xerrox" volumes - but Bazin sets himself apart by focusing more urgently on the sound's open-skied potential, suggesting a universe of stars and humming electromagnetic sound.”
BOOMKAT
Terre de Songe was composed for a special INA GRM event held on January 28, 2018, at the request of Daniel Teruggi, former director of the GRM, to mark his departure.
The piece features a reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dream-Land, in Stéphane Mallarmé’s French translation, performed by actor Stéphane Olivié Bisson.
This work is a variation on my earlier composition Dream-Land (Important Records), now expanded through the presence of the spoken word. In the tradition of GRM’s acousmatic works — such as Bernard Parmegiani’s L’Enfer or Guy Reibel’s Suite pour Edgar Poe — the piece explores a mysterious, perhaps imaginary land, at the edge of human perception.
A lone traveler moves through shadowed landscapes, “Out of space – Out of time.” This Earth evokes solitude, purgatory, and introspection. Its arid expanse draws a vertiginous map of memory, forgotten figures, and an idol named Night.
The EMS Synthi sculpts this territory in sound — its brightness, sharp attacks, and deep bass responding to Poe’s haunting imagery: “Mountains toppling evermore into seas without a shore.”
The composition ends with a field recording made in midwinter on a stormy, deserted beach in the French Landes region.
Credits
Photograph: Todd Hido
Graphic design: João Castro / The Royal Studio
Released on Sonorum