With nine albums to his name, Matt Elliott is the master of stripped-back melancholic and pessimistic laments, with world music that pays tribute to loss and inevitable heartbreak underpinned by Slavonic and Gypsy influences. Over the past fifteen years, the Bristol-born composer and guitarist has blended folk and folklore to touch on all kinds of music, somewhere between the sacred and profane, sombre and experimental, as if on the precipice of a stormy sky, lost in the heart of the ocean.
By opening up his music to the cello of Gaspar Claus (who has previously worked with Jim O’Rourke, Sufjan Stevens, Peter Von Poehl) and the violins of Carla Pallone (Mansfield TYA) and Christelle Lassort (Narrow Terence), Matt Elliott has done far more than extend his musical arrangements. The three artists from Vacarme are longstanding fans of Matt Elliott’s music and succeed in revealing the very essence of his adventurous, austere and lyrical compositions, while closely following the melodies.
Unlike his very clean solo work, here there is space for freedom, improvisation and the right to hesitate or experiment. This concerts strikes a delicate balance, walking a tightrope as these two worlds collide, coming into its own within the confines of the Chapelle du Conservatoire.
BIOGRAPHY
> MATT ELLIOTT (United Kingdom)
Matt Elliott started out in Bristol with drum & bass group, The Third Eye Foundation (which he subsequently joined for a reunion tour in 2015), where he also worked as a remixer for Amp, Hood, Yann Tiersen, Mogwai, Ulver, Tarwater, The Pastels and Thurston Moore, etc. He then moved to France and released his first solo album, The Mess We Made (2003, Domino), with a dark folk sound that drew a definitive line under the electronic music he had produced in the UK. He is signed to French label, Ici d’Ailleurs, which continues to support him today, releasing Drinking Songs (2005), Failing Songs (2006), Howling Songs (2008), Failed Songs (2009), The Broken Man (2011), Only Myocardial Infarction Can Break Your Heart (2013), The Calm Before (2016) and Songs of Resignation (2018).
> VACARME (France)
The Vacarme trio comprises violinists Carla Pallone and Christelle Lassort and celloist Gaspar Claus and was formed in 2012 during a residency in Toulouse. They reformed one year later at Le Printemps de Bourges to adapt and accompany Rover, Barbara Carlotti and Youssoupha in three different concerts, and then again in 2017, for a performance at the Philharmonie de Paris during Nuit Blanche, before recording their first eponymous album (Vacarme, 2018) and pursuing various collaborations with artists including Stranded Horse, Rone, Villeneuve & Morano.
DISTRIBUTION
Guitare, voix : Matt Elliott
Violon : Carla Pallone
Violon : Christelle Lassort
Violoncelle : Gaspar Claus
