Second Stage is a recurring feature on the All Songs Considered blog featuring emerging, unsigned or otherwise great unknown artists.
Charles-Eric Charrier is a multi-instrumentalist who lives and works in Nantes, France, and says he's recorded nearly two dozen albums. For his latest work, Silver, Charrier played most of what's on the record: bass, piano, trumpet, metallophone, charango and what he calls "breath." Longtime collaborators Ronan Benoit and Cyril Secq also sat in on the sessions: Benoit covered percussion while Secq handled guitar, organic synthesizer and additional metallophone and charango.
As far as how long the three have worked together, Charrier says, "[I] don't remember well, because I've got this fabulous impression to [have] known them since a very long time, maybe before Jurassic." Perhaps that's why the album's recording process wrapped in just four sessions — that's one week total.
That sort of obsessive commitment and well-rounded instrumentation is what makes Silver resound. It starts as a faint glow, growing in brightness with each sparse snare-drum strike. Slow, Nancy Sinatra-esque guitar cuts through the psychedelic, seductive rhythms of the opening track. Unfathomably, those same slap-backed strings assimilate into the wall of emotive sound. Classic brush-drumming is paired with ambient samples in the following track, "12 From," catapulting the sound into space-jazz territory.
Charrier says he listened to a lot of African and Arabian records during the Silver sessions. Those influences are evidenced in the subtle warbling of "9 Moving," with its strings rising wildly before coiling into an exhausted heap.
Click the link above to hear and download "21 Echoes Short."
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