Contrepoint
Nicolas Godin
- Orca
- Widerstehe Doch Der Sünde
- Club Nine
- Clara
- Glenn
- Quei Due
- Bach Off
- Elfe Man
After seven albums as one half of celebrated musical duo AIR, Nicolas Godin’s first solo album Contrepoint has reached back in time to move further forward. On AIR’S last tour, in 2010 Godin realised that he’d reached an impasse. “I observed that music was taking up only a small part of my daily life,” he recalls. “And every day on tour was the same. I had become what Glenn Gould called ‘a travelling monkey in the concert circus...’”
The end result is Contrepoint, a dazzling experience that conjoins Godin’s former habitual musical fusions with classical forms, taking the listener on multiple adventurous journeys, often within each song, with counterpoint just one of its many landmarks. It’s remarkably varied in tone and rhythm, splicing genres with a bold, punchy and yet sensual and sweeping feel, with a variety of enticing lyrical narratives, and a starry international cast of guests, such as French vocalist Gordon Tracks, Brazilian singer Marcelo Camelo, Italian author Alessandro Barrico, New Zealand guitarist Connan Mockasin and the choir from Macedonia’s F.A.M.E.'S. Project. But the unifying force of Contrepoint is Johann Sebastian Bach. Each album track uses a Bach piece as its source, before jumping off to all manner of new places.
