Ethereal (FR)

Translated from French:

After several digital only releases, Mr. Grig sees his first real long-format published in physical medium by 12k, label that we know attentive to newcomers, even when they operate in a field a little outside the traditional terrain of expression of Taylor Deupree’s structure. Indeed, Mr. Grig offers us here eight acoustic pieces, composed from interventions of dobro, dry guitars, lap steel and pedal steel. Unsurprisingly, in this instrumental context, we learn that the artist wrote this album by remembering the places where he lived as a child, marked by rocky spaces (cliffs, hills) to awaken the imagination.

With the introduction of field recordings, on which are then grafted the plucked strings of guitars, the musician gives rise to vagabond feelings in his audience. However, Michael Grigoni does not abuse too much reverb or effects, preferring simply to play on the resonance and the stripping of his pieces, sufficient, by themselves, to wander the mind, slightly cradled. If the scheme set up at the opening of the disc does not vary much, we can also see that the artist found his style and deploys throughout the forty minutes of Mount Carmel, without pouring into the demonstrative (no galloping of the fingers on the handles of the instruments, no overbidding or superposition of lines of six-strings) nor, at the other end of the spectrum, asceticism (the guitars are present on each of the titles).

Discreet, humble and honest, this positioning is then to the credit of Mr. Grig who can even, at the end of the album, go to arouse a little emotion, skillfully caressing the ear of his audience with closer notes (H) or the appearance of more wavy notes (Response).