Jozef Dumoulin - This Body, This Life [Carton Records Crox-Croix 028]

Released via the Lyon / France-based label Carton Records - which btw has secured one of the best URLs ever for their website - on May 26th, 2k23 is "This Body, This Life", the second ever solo album realized and written by Belgian piano player x composer Josef Dumoulin. With 14 pieces rolled out over the course of roughly 50 minutes Dumoulin combines improvisations recorded both on piano and fender rhodes and pairs those with additional instruments and electronic textures, field recordings and vocals to an intriguing effect, meandering somewhat in between deepest, partly Jazz-infused melancholia, echoes of stage scores for modernist theatre performance, Modern Classical influences as well as Electronica and Downtempo x Dop Beat, the latter especially prevalent in the seven minutes spanning "Social Disdance" which might be our favorite cut on this album by far, not only for being somewhat reminiscent of a certain legendary Boards Of Canada album - minus the washed out atmospheres -, whereas the subsequent "La Vie En Rhodes" seems to hark back to actual early experimental electronic music production and tape loop techniques, "Eighteen Chords For An Angel" explores full on piano minimalism, "Lonely Tree On Rocks" follows on a full on solo late night BarJazz piano path and "Seed Syllables" dives deeply into a modified rhodes cut up x Electronica x found sound samples fusion vibe just to name a few. Interesting stuff, this.

Album artwork on Instagram!