Noted for two albums of cover versions (Novö Piano, on which he revisited key indie-rock, pop and electro tracks, and Modern Rhapsodies, devoted to techno), pianist Maxence Cyrin is back with The Fantasist, an album of original and instrumental compositions, with romantic and cinematic tones.
The Fantasist is the name of a troubled character who could be defined as the oni- rique double or lyrical avatar of Maxence Cyrin. The album, built around multiple keyboard colors (the piano of course, a few vintage synths, but also the Hammond organ, the harpsichord and the Mellotron – a sixties ancestor of the sampler), with its alternately fervent and romantic melodies, its moments of melancholy and ecstasy, evokes for the composer the aesthetic whims and taste for artifice of the hero imagined by Huysmans in À rebours, as well as the resolutely fin-de-siècle atmosphere that pervades this novel published in 1884. “There’s a lot of me in this album”, confirms the Parisian composer, “there are very strong feelings, but also a dreamy dimension, which is reminiscent of the Romantic tradition of symphonic poems. In La symphonie fantastique, for example, Berlioz portrayed a musician afflicted with a strange malady known as vague des passions, a kind of melancholy reverie interrupted by fits of delirium and visions of love. On the other hand, it’s also a very expressionist album, with a fiery side reminiscent of Rachmaninov and his Piano Concerto No. 2, for example.
However, beyond the historical and classical references, The Fantasist undoubtedly draws more on film music and a certain French tradition of pop composers with a passion for arrangements and orchestration.
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