After a few concerts/screenings improvised as a duo in Cairo and Beirut, as well as for the Rencontres d'Arles, the Lille photography center and the Belgian magazine Halogénure, Dargent and Oberland have teamed up with mavericks Elieh and Halal for a puzzling cross-border manifesto. The first sonic moves of this eclectic quartet, made in a bunker studio somewhere between Paris and Berlin, urgently took the form of a quest, that of a neo-folklore for troubled times, a music seeping with many kinds of atavism and experimenting in all directions. A fertile no-man's-land where trance and contemplation, jazz and electronica, acoustics and electricity would merge in a stimulating mystical magma. From the possible emergence of a Babelian language to the shared desire to rediscover music as a ceremonial act, this encounter took place over three days of improvised sound bacchanalia, the phases of which were all recorded by Benoit Bel (Zombie Zombie, Thurston Moore Group, Oiseaux-Tempête). A hallucinated and generous testimony, SIHR is a synergy of many different worlds and many different possibilities, the sonic vision of a present conjugated in a hybrid tense and exalted by too many tangos danced on the glowing ashes of our days.
Frédéric D. Oberland : modular, buchla & drum synths, alto saxophone, electric guitar, voice
Grégory Dargent : electric oud & guitar, analog synths, bells
Tony Elieh : electric bass & cellphone synths
Wassim Halal : bendir, darbuka, bells & augmented percussion
Recorded by Benoît Bel assisted by Didier Houbre at Downton Bunker studios in April 2022 // Edited by Frédéric D. Oberland at Magnum Diva in October 2023 // Mixed & mastered by Benoît Bel in January 2024 // Lacquer cut by François Terrazzoni // Artwork photography by Grégory Dargent & Frédéric D. Oberland // Graphic design by Mountain