Flore Laurentienne

Flore Laurentienne, Mathieu David Gagnon’s incomparable project, today announces the album “8 tableaux“, available March 1st.  The composer, orchestrator and musician draw inspiration from the works of Jean Paul Riopelle with this new offering.

The first single, “Au couchant“, unveiled last November, as well as Flore Laurentienne’s appearance at the Trans Musicales de Rennes in France, have already aroused the curiosity of the media: Billboard’s selection of the week; “the song and the visuals of the single evoke a sensation of imposing calm – a style that draws the listener into a state of prolonged contemplation”, a review in Le Monde comparing it to Jean-Michel Jarre, and several mentions in Les Inrocks, Tsugi Magazine, Le Journal de Québec, Radio-Canada and more. According to CBC Music, “8 tableaux” is also one of the must-have albums of 2024.

Mathieu shares with us the creative process behind the new opus: “Music is an art that takes place over time, whereas painting is a frozen frame at a precise moment in the painter’s creative flow. With “8 tableaux”, I tried to give a musical form to a painting”.

“But how to achieve this, how to stop time in music?

By basing the structure of the pieces on cycles that recur again and again, the ear can be led to believe that the music was there before and will be there afterwards. With no beginning and no end, all that’s left is a musical freeze-frame…

Following this approach, I quickly realized that music and painting both call for contemplation,” he explains.

“Another concept I worked around with this record is the notion of randomness in music. Riopelle is often associated with the Automatist movement. His greatest works of the ’50s are for me, more reminiscent of romantic abstraction, or even of a great organic and organized chaos (a link to be made with nature here). It’s from this reflection that I tried to integrate the notion of controlled randomness, or rather, chaos filtered by emotion,” concludes the composer.

Flore Laurentienne’s albums “Volume 1” and “Volume 2“, released via Costume Records, won over audiences and critics alike, garnering two Félix awards at the 2020 ADISQ Gala and the trophy for Best Experimental Album at GAMIQ the same year. The albums also garnered several nominations at the ADISQ Gala, the JUNO Prize and the long list of the prestigious Polaris Music Prize. “Fleuve No. 1″ opened the Chanel fashion show at Paris Fashion Week 2022.

Flore Laurentienne is the result of a happy marriage between electronic and classically-influenced music. The project is committed to constantly pushing back the boundaries between various musical genres such as ambient, experimental and progressive rock.