albums

Out Now: Le Rêve Album

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Le Rêve is an album that sprouted from the imagination of the French multi-instrumentalist Arnaud Lechat one Monday afternoon, late 2022. The inspiration was the painting Le Rêve and other work by Henri Rousseau, the fascinating naïve painter in fin-de-siècle / early 1900s Paris. In one inspired flow, Arnaud heard the parts for his own instruments and those I would play or sing. He recorded his own parts that afternoon, one by one as multi-track pieces. Then he invited me to add my own parts, specifying the instruments, moods and such. In a short while, everything fell together wonderfully well. Arnaud arranged the first performance with dancer Zhan Yachun, and several more followed. After those, we created a music-only version of Le Rêve.
When I announced this upcoming album earlier this year, I was in very good spirits about the collaboration with Arnaud. There was the musical click we had had during previous projects, and an intensified click from the music he created for the two of us. We had had frequent contact for over a year about this production, and decided about many issues for the release together. We got close to the stage of pressing the album and needed one final meeting for the last issues regarding the design.

 

And then, all of a sudden, Arnaud was no more.

 

Big shock.

 

Arnaud died almost instantly from heart failure on September 19, 2024.

 

Our dreams to play this album live vanished. Our dreams for more projects could only remain dreams. The title of the album (which translates as ‘the dream’) haunted me in strange ways. I realised afterwards that the last café where we had met was called Dreamers Coffee. Two days after he passed away (and also the day after the gig we had to play without him in Kaohsiung), fate steered me to a café to meet someone, the only option left over. The name? Rêve.
Most of all, it was hard to grasp the reality of someone of only 50 years old and living a healthy life, dying so sudden.
It became clear how Arnaud had touched many people with this generosity and curiosity. He had set up many collaborations, getting the best out of a great variety of people. Some of them did not even consider themselves an artist. Arnaud recognised a talent and created nourishing conditions and used his organising skills so that the talent could emerge, and then merge with his own.

 

What a privilege it was to know Arnaud, albeit for a few years. And to experience the genesis of a new way to combine improvisation with compositional sketches. Arnaud’s death is a tremendous loss for the many artists and music lovers, here in the greater Taipei area, and further afield. This album is his last completed work recorded for posteriority.

 

Click on the image to go to Bandcamp to listen, to buy the physical album and/or to get the download.

 

The 1910 painting by Henri Rousseau which inspired Arnaud to write his new work

Recording in progress (photo: Sunny Chen)

 

Le Rêve Album Announcement

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（中文在下方）
October UPDATE to the original post:
All of a sudden, Arnaud Lechat passed away on September 19, in the midst of many fine projects he was working on. Not long before, Arnaud had launched several websites, one for this album project (https://lerevemusic.tumblr.com/ ), another for our ALLsymt trio.
His widow immediately decided the album should still be released, but we experienced some delays.
We expect the physical album to be ready on November 7, the way Arnaud prepared and intended it.
For now, do not order the album on Arnaud’s Bandcamp while we are sorting out if and how his account there can be continued.
We will soon add a button to buy the album directly and create a new post, but you can also follow the procedure explained below.
It is time to round up some support for our next album project. Below you can read how to suport our album, but first some more on the genesis of this music and dance piece. Over the last 12 months or so I played quite a few iterations of Arnaud Lechat’s wonderful cycle of compositions called Le Rêve, based on the painting by Henri Rousseau. Arnaud recorded his own parts for flutes, percussion and voice on one afternoon, a year ago or so. He sent me the tracks and soon after I came over to play parts on voice, flutes, mouth-harps and effects, the way he had it in mind. It fitted seamlessly so we did several performances with a dancer. Each time it was different. Some things got better, some things failed or were less interesting. Each time we had Zhan Yachun dancing with us.
The new challenge was to play the music without her dancing. We tried several times. Each time it was different, very different. But the shape became sharp. This year on Fools’ Day, we committed our audio-only version to the recording machine of French recording expert Yannick Dauby. The result was beyond our expectation. We are really excited to put this album into the world: for musicians this is always a special process and event. And not without obstacles. I have had long discussions with Arnaud about the question: to print or not to print? Fewer and fewer people have CD players. Even the car, which was the last bulwark of CD players for many people, is changing to audio and video streaming now. For decades – what I say? – for a hundred or more years, selling records was a means of generating an income for musicians.

The 1910 painting by Henri Rousseau which inspired Arnaud to write his new work

With that epoch coming to an end, one of the ‘traditional’ ways for a musician or record label to recuperate the cost of recording, desiging, printing, distributing and promoting an album is challenging. For 20 years or so we enjoyed the ability to record cheaper, in high quality, and produce small print-runs of CDs. But now physical things are harder to sell. Arnaud tried making an album with a beautiful booklet with poems and art work and a download code – no CD inside. It did not work: buyers still wanted a CD, not just the booklet with download code. But as time goes on, even our CDs are selling fewer and fewer at concerts.
And yet, being musicians, produce we must. The physical CD, a digipack or something similar in carton, without booklet, is taking shape (see the top of the message to get an impression of where the design is going at the moment).
Watch an excerpt from one of the live performances we did of this album, when it was still primarily a music & dance performance (which it also will be: we will do sections of Le Rêve in an entirely new setting in the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in september).

I will spare you the details of why and how we came to the conclusion to put out a physical album in 2024. You can read that in my newsletter if you like (sign up if you like). Here is how you can support us, in order of urgency (most urgent support comes first):
1. Pre-order the album in the making from us, so that we can get part of the production cost together instead of investing our savings. Pay to my bank account or Paypal (see below).

2. Pre-order the album when we (Arnaud and Mark) put it on our Bandcamp pages. Bandcamp is a fantastic medium which pays a very large share to musicians. Compared to Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube it is a musician’s heaven, and a place where fans can express their interest in a very concrete way. Bandcamp is right when it claims that “artists receive 80-85% of every dollar a fan spends” and they pay very soon too, not after 6 or 12 months.

3. Buy the album when it is out, from us or from Bandcamp, or at a concert. You might never play the actual CD, we know, but you can get a download code and we can plan our next album, because people like you bought this one!

 

One last option: if there hides a philantrope in you, if you like to support the arts and other causes, and if you can easily spend some more, consider to pay more than just the album price. Basically, this is like tipping a waiter, or even sponsoring a project. Bandcamp too has this function to pay more than the set price, and in the last two years I noticed every once in a while fans do indeed pay extra! Every bit counts and the gesture itself is already very encouraging. If you pay more than the album price we have more chances to do more promotion, put out more albums, etc. If you want to support in a more substantial way and are interested in return-favors (a dedication in the album sleeve, a concert at home, etc.), please let us know by sending an email.

 

Pre-order Le Rêve now!

1. Make your choice:

CD with download code € 15,- + worldwide shipping € 10,- = € 25,-

CD with download code € 15,- + europe shipping € 7,- = € 22,-

CD with download code € 15,- + Netherlands shipping € 5,- = € 20,-

CD with download code NT$ 500,- + Taiwan shipping NT$ 80,- = NT$ 580

Ask us for special rates, for example sending to Japan from Taiwan.

2. Choose a payment method:

A. by bank:

M.C. van Tongeren

BIC/Swfit code: ASN BNL21

IBAN: NL50 ASNB0708027512

THE NETHERLANDS

B. by Paypal: use paypals@fusica.nl

 3. Let us know you ordered / paid:

Send a message to info@fusica.nl and cc to Hsi-Yin (hsiyin724@gmail.com) with ‘DreamOrder’ in the subject header or title. Make sure to leave your name + full address + phone (optional) and also let us know your banking name / last 3 digits (for Taiwan).

4. In the planned release month September or October we will send you the album as soon as it is out!

Recording in progress

如果你希望像我們這樣的人繼續創作出色的音樂，錄製並推廣給主辦方、給你、給音樂愛好者，那麼你能做的最好的事情就是慷慨支持專輯錄製項目或現場活動。這幾個月來，Arnaud和我都在焦頭爛額，有時感到絕望，完全不知道接下來會怎麼樣。但我們必須這麼做，因為我們相信Arnaud的作品、我們的合作以及其他一些項目的力量。 那麼你可以做什麼呢？你可以在不同階段以不同方式支持我們製作的專輯。

 

  •  當我們（Arnaud和Mark）將專輯放到Bandcamp頁面時預購。Bandcamp是一個非常棒的平台，支付給音樂家的比例非常高。與Apple Music、Spotify和YouTube相比，這是一個音樂家的天堂，也是粉絲可以非常具體地表達他們興趣的地方。Bandcamp聲稱「藝術家獲得粉絲每花費一美元的80-85%」，這是正確的，而且支付非常快，不是6個月或12個月之後。
  •  從我們或Bandcamp或在音樂會上購買。你可能永遠不會播放實體CD，我們知道，但你可以獲得下載碼，這樣我們可以計劃下一張專輯，因為像你這樣的人購買了這一張！ 最後一個選擇：如果你內心有一個慈善家，喜歡支持藝術和其他事業，而且可以輕鬆地花費更多，考慮支付超過專輯價格的金額。基本上，這就像給服務員的小費，甚至是贊助一個項目。Bandcamp也有這個功能，可以支付超過設定價格的金額，在過去兩年中，我注意到偶爾會有粉絲確實支付額外的金額！每一點都很重要，這一舉動本身就非常令人鼓舞。如果你支付超過專輯價格，我們就有更多的機會進行更多的宣傳，發行更多的專輯等。如果你想以更實質的方式支持，並對回報（如專輯封套上的致謝，家庭演唱會等）感興趣，請通過電子郵件告訴我們。

訂購《Le Rêve》專輯！

  CD加下載碼 NT$500 + 台灣運費 NT$80 = NT$580
   請向我們詢問特別運費，例如從台灣寄往日本。
  • 選擇付款方式：
銀行：中國信託敦南分行(代號:822)
帳號：163540306745
戶名：MARK CHRISTIAAN VAN TONGEREN
  • 讓我們知道你已訂購/支付： 寄信給 mark@fusica.nl 並cc至 Hsi-Yin（hsiyin724@gmail.com），標題或主題欄寫上“DreamOrder”。請務必留下你的姓名+完整地址+電話（可選），並告訴我們你的銀行姓名/最後三位數字（針對台灣）。
  • 我們將把專輯立即寄給你！