Sissoko Segal Parisien Peirani is a new quartet bringing together Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko, French cellist & Victoire De La Musique winner Vincent Segal, French accordionist Vincent Peirani and saxophonist Émile Parisien (also both fellow winners at the Victories). The debut album from the new project, ‘Les Égarés’ is due for release on March 31, 2023 via Nø Førmat! records (Oumou Sangaré, Blick Bassy). Ahead of then, the quartet today release two new pieces of music – watch the video for ‘Banja’ – shot by Julien Borel at Studio Ferber – and stream ‘Ta Nyé’ across all platforms from here.
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR ‘BANJA’ & STREAM ‘TA NYÉ’ HERE
The seeds for ‘Les Égarés’ were sewn back in 2019, in Lyon, at a gathering to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Nø Førmat! label in a beautiful setting of Roman stones under an open sky. Vincent Segal played the role of master of ceremonies, gathering together guests of choice, among whom were Ballaké Sissoko, Vincent Peirani and Émile Parisien. The two pairs of musicians have been cross-fertilising sounds and genres for many years, with Sissoko & Segal’s startling first collaboration, ‘Chamber Music’, released in 2010 by Nø Førmat!. The participants signed a pact in Lyon: rehearsing must never take precedence over spontaneous creation. That afternoon, in an arbour that shielded them from the hot sun, they started to jam, giving rise to the idea of forming a quartet of Égarés (meaning ‘those who have gone astray’). And that’s what the recording of the subsequent album felt like too: a spontaneous sharing of impulse and know-how.
In the case of ‘Les Égarés’, 2 + 2 no longer makes 4, it makes 1. Because what they concoct is a unity of spirit, a single and fluid sound that puts each participant at the service of a common musical good. Neither jazz, nor trad, nor chamber, nor avant-garde, but a bit of all of them, all at once, Les Égarés is the kind of album that makes the ear the king of all instruments. One promise which couldn’t be fulfilled was Segal’s wish to record in Bamako with Sissoko, as the pair had previously done for ‘Chamber Music’. The extreme tension that currently holds sway in Mali scuppered this and, in the end, the four musicians set up their creative workshop in the alpine town of Gap, where tracks including kora-led album opener ‘Ta Nyé’ and and album closer ‘Banja’ soon took shape.
Without any showiness, Ballaké, Segal, Peirani and Parisien pull off a whole series of exploits that are never advertised as such. ‘Les Égarés’ is a record without solo voice that never stops singing; a record without drums or percussion that never stops enabling a very delicate pulse to be heard; a record that embraces the art of compassionate ‘unframing’ and voluntary drifting, whose elegance evokes other great drifters like Don Cherry, or Penguin Café Orchestra. ‘I’ve never recorded an album in such an atmosphere,’ says Vincent Peirani. ‘None of us were ‘performing’, so much so that the music communicates a lot without ever having to “tell” it. None of us possessed the truth beforehand: all we did is find it together.’