"Sound before all else." Paul Verlaine's poetic statement could thus be adapted to become the motto of Philippe Mouratoglou. A sound is energy. It comes to the ear in the form of a wave with a specific profile, the tone. Sound →energy →tone: these are the key words that lie at the heart of the guitarist's musical conception, seeking to grasp its fundamental qualities.

The cornerstone of his albums conceived for/with improvisers, his exploration of sound is revealed by the manipulation of registers, the use of various types of guitars (in this case, a 6-string acoustic – whose steel strings give the instrument greater sustain than a classical guitar – and a baritone guitar tuned down a fourth), a variety of string attacks, a more or less complex polyphonic or chordal density, various open tunings, and many other aspects. All of Philippe Mouratoglou's compositions, as well as his arrangements of works by Ornette Coleman, Blind Willie Johnson and Egberto Gismonti, have been imagined based on one and/or another of these factors and then raised to the dimension of a singular group sound, for both the written and improvised parts. The product of tonal research on the instrument itself and not on manuscript paper, there is nothing speculative about his musical offerings. Here, intellectualism always gives way to hedonism, to the pure pleasure of an immersion in sound.

Thus, the distinctive sound of each track on the album is not just a launch pad for musical action, but also a horizon to perpetuate as the music unfolds. It is the interplay of resonances, the variety of colors and other processes of this type that enable the trio to consistently avoid the monochrome. In this respect, the subtle palette of nuances one perceives while listening is one of the distinctive elements of Philippe Mouratoglou's music, a dimension that is sometimes reduced to its bare minimum in jazz. The approach to improvisation flows from this tonal precept. Here it consists in both an amplification of initial musical ideas and in the discovery of their unimagined potential. Far from being an end in itself, for Philippe Mouratoglou improvisation is a call to action and a means to bring into play the inspiration of partners chosen for their capacity to invent anew, selected for their vocation to scout out new paths towards musical Promised Lands and Eldorados.

Whilst in the trio's first opus, Univers Solitude (2018), the double bass was considered as an extension of the guitar, since Ricercare (2021) and even more so on this album, Philippe Mouratoglou has given free reign to Bruno Chevillon, enabling him to demonstrate his telesthetic understanding of the band leader's intentions. Comforted in this by Ramón López' unrivaled open and attentive approach, the guitarist's overall guiding principle consists in leading a musical idea to unimagined new territory through the interaction and imaginative power of a triangular formation, a process that is related as much to the tradition of the theme and variations of "scholarly" western music as to that of jazz performance.

The music thus obtained, neither melancholic nor unbridled, the fruit of an atypical stylistic graft – the synthesis of folk music, jazz and blues, so-called "world" music, "classical" music from the Renaissance to Romanticism, and "contemporary" music (less as an esthetic than as an enhancer) – is the stuff of dreams at any tempo. The luminous sobriety of the music of the trio led by Philippe Mouratoglou is good for the soul.

Ludovic Florin