Ethereal (FR)

Assuming to put his guitar less majestically for his new album, coming almost ten years after the last, Fourcolor seems to opt for a more ambient work, focused on the combination of textures, quite rich and elaborate, retaining this beautiful luminosity that we knows him. This ability to create clarity from all the materials used leads the Japanese to give his harmonics a slightly dull shine (Refracted), to give crystalline reflections to the detached notes of Sink Into Gray or to adorn the arpeggios played with Blur’s finger-picking of brilliant intensity. In these titles, it is indeed Keiichi Sugimoto’s six-string that is used, testimony to his stylistic consistency and his appetite for an instrument from which, however, he knows how to extract something else, like a Blur in in which the layers are superimposed and treatments cover the plucked strings.

Not really abandoning his guitar, in reality, Fourcolor therefore prefers to draw other assets from it, to use it at the same level as its electronic components, blows and taps, or as organic contributions (Hazy Blue’s harmonium, very soft). The result is a real emotion, born from the thrill regularly distilled in pieces like Trace or Spur crossed by retro-futuristic sounds. Rather than lines with assertive melodies, the Japanese artist therefore weaves tracks with beautiful clarity, composite sparkle and discreet treatments, crossed by an overall modesty, an economy of means but a real spell.