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L'inattingible

by Delphine Dora

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Songe 01:57
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Loin 03:56
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L'inexploré 03:12
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about

" l'Inattingible" in Top 10 albums of the decade (2010-2020) by Julia Holter.

***** MOJO June 2020

"L’inattingible, is arguably her most ambitious and highly orchestrated statement yet, marking a major creative leap forward for her as a songwriter and composer. It’s one of our favorite albums of 2020 so far." (David Perron, Free Form Freakout)

"L'Inattingible est une œuvre à part dans la discographie de Delphine Dora. Nous n'avons pu résister à l'intégrer à la présentation des deux précédentes...
Très beau titre, ce n'est pas l'intangible que l'on ne peut pas toucher, le mot enjambe la marque infamante de notre inaptitude, de notre incomplétude, il nous porte dans cette chose qui nous est inatteignable, nous transporte dans sa nature même, dans sa constituvité même, qui est justement d'être inattingible. Pochette : puits d'ombre encadré de blanc. Trois cercles concentriques, en cœur de cible Delphine Dora au piano, deux margelles exentriques, jeu de l'oie de photographies, cases d'affects et de symboles, séparées d'un mince trait blanc. Elle est de Marie-Douce St Jacques. Artiste canadienne multidisciplinaire. Une démarche formelle qui interroge la perfection à laquelle, selon différents médiums artistiques, elle peut atteindre, le pronom ''elle'' représentant autant elle-même, que la démarche elle-même, que la perfection elle-même. Plus abstraitement je dirais qu'elle cherche à transformer le signe qui ne peut-être entrevu que par certains en une forme que tout un chacun peut percevoir. Ce qui ne signifie pas comprendre.
Question instrumentation, ce n'est plus le piano dépouillé d'Eudaimon, l'orchestration oscille entre classique évanescent et noise discret.
(...) L'Inattingible est une œuvre cime dans la discographie de Delphine Dora. L'opus reste marqué par la poésie de Katleen Raine, il est à lire en tant que réponse doranienne à la vision poétique rainienne. Cela est davantage visible dans les morceaux du début, ce n'est qu'après que Dora développe ses propres vues. Ce n'est pas un hasard si Dora s'est chargée de l'écriture des textes... quant à la musique elle est l'aboutissement de tout un parcours créatif. Il est le fruit d'un long désir. C'est un chef-d'œuvre qui reste difficile d'accès. D'une richesse musicale extrême que nous n'avons qu'à peine évoquée dans notre chronique, nous contentant d'en définir un parcours idéographique. Qu'il soit clair que nous avons essayé d'en donner une sorte de transcription nôtre, qui ne vise à aucune objectivité critique, réservée à notre propre usage.
La composition et l'enregistrement, fragmentés sur une dizaine de pays, s'étalent sur près d’un an, ils oscillent sans cesse entre improvisation et fixation, entre écriture solitaire et mise en forme collective. Elle risque de désarçonner les fans de rock purs et durs et d'intriguer les amateurs de jazz. Elle emprunte au classique, au noise et à l'électro. Ce n'est ni du rock, ni du jazz, mais elle possède à sa manière la virulence du premier et la subtilité du second. Quoi qu'il en soit pour voler un mot à Baudelaire, nous affirmons qu'il s'agit d'une œuvre phare."
(les chroniques du pourpre, Damie Chad.)

"Trop d’amis (dont Sylvia Hallett, Le fruit vert, Lau Nau) pour tous les nommer, trop d’instruments pour tous les énumérer colorent cette épopée fantomatique signée Delphine Dora. Cordes, vents, synthétiseurs analogiques, sons électroniques, accordéon, bruits divers : c’est un véritable orchestre là-dedans. Mais tout en retenue. La Française invoque avec ce disque en français une spiritualité éthérée ancrée dans les éléments, prenant son essence dans un passé païen et gothique. Demi-incantations, les mots de Dora sont faits d’une poésie du mystère et de l’émerveillement. Les courtes pièces de L’inattingible (déjà, ce titre, c’est beau, non ?) sont une illusion psychédélique collectivement assemblée sous la commande d’un cerveau rêveur. La beauté du geste collectif, c’est qu’il tisse un enchevêtrement anonyme. À qui appartient cette voix, cette note, ce râle ? Qu’importe."
Sophie Chartier, Le Devoir, Fevrier 2020

"(...) L'Inattingible has the feel of a big statement – for starters, Dora has taken collaboration much further than in the past and the cast of contributors is extensive. The fourteen contributors include vocalists Jackie McDowell, Laura Naukkarinen and Caity Shaffer, several multi-instrumentalists including Gayle Brogan on e-bowed zither, guitar, hammered dulcimer and aeolian chimes, and she’s even integrated Québecquois duo Le Fruit Vert. Those familiar with Dora’s work will know about the melodically and emotionally indeterminate spaces she inhabits but there’s plenty that is new here: she sings entirely in French for the first time, and the process of crafting (writing and editing) the 21 pieces has been more involved than the spontaneous approach she has previously favoured. Without becoming overburdened, Dora’s voice and piano are richly embellished – the gorgeous ‘Loin’ floats on a bed of keyboard, strings, flute and a gathering cloud of vocals, while the brief ‘Métamorphose Déracinée’ brings together spoken word, distant, beguiling oboe, running water, piano and creaking, fluttering and rattling noises. Each track is like another glimpse into an abandoned ornamental garden; vegetation grown wild, water still flowing through cracked fountains, echoes of voices carried on the breeze."
David McKenna, The Quietus

"Exciting and varied record at the intersection of new music, pop / chanson and post rock. A fascinating melting pot / collage of instruments, acoustic sounds, vocals and electronics. It varies between song- and melody-based pieces and more abstract new music. It feels organic and improvised, and it is often vibrant and beautiful. Released in February on Three: Four Records."
Oslo Public Library Music Blog - Best album of 2020

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With L’Inattingible, Delphine Dora’s music unfolds by drawing upon a new palette of colors. It will not escape anyone, that after having sung, in foreign, invented languages, or through extended vocal techniques, the musician resorts for the first time, to solely using the French language; and that after having often set texts and poems by other authors to music, she authorizes herself here to sing her own texts and fragments.

But beyond these formal enrichments, the new musical ambitions developed through L'Inattingible are to be found in the very fabric of the record. If the previous albums had been conceived through improvisations or spontaneous compositions, the new pieces have found their definitive incarnations through a lengthy process of collation, rewriting, and a multitude of transformations. Moreover, the composition process now involves a complex montage of texts, sounds and instruments. If the keyboard remains the inextinguishable lung of the record, it is no longer rare to come upon Delphine's sung lines and have them echo into a lush instrumentation - where in voices and instruments create a language, and develop dialogues that have never been heard before.

The new charm of her music seems to lie in the many participations that punctuate the album, giving her pieces their very particular colourations. We can hear no less than thirty instruments with configurations that differ from one piece to another: wind and string instruments, electronic instruments, a multitude of keyboard sounds, unusual instruments and all kinds of incongruous sonorities. Among them are Aby Vulliamy’s viola, accordion and musical saw (Nalle, The One Ensemble...), Adam Cadell’s violin, Susan Matthews’ harmonium, Taralie Peterson’s saxophone (Spires That In The Sunset Rise), Le Fruit Vert’s analog synthesizers, Valérie Leclercq’s percussion and flute (Half Asleep), Paulo Chagas' oboe and clarinet, the voices of Laura Naukkkarinen (Lau Nau), Caity Shaffer (Olden Yolk) and Jackie McDowell, Tom James Scott's ghostly piano, Sylvia Hallett's bicycle wheel or hurdy-gurdy, or Gayle Brogan's sculpted sounds (Pefkin). That is: a constellation of musicians who have never ceased to expand their sonic territories, experimenting throughout the years since the 2000s, drawing inspiration from folk or psychedelic music as well as from the field of improvised or experimental music.

It must be highlighted, the extent to which this record could only come into being through the presence of these different participants. Incidentally, all of its strength lies in a paradox that gives shape to this "inattingible”, which is all the more elusive because it seems to only assert itself only through a series of actions engaged in a continual flux between presence and absence. Constantly brushing against each other, these sound bodies come to trace, as we listen, the contours of an "other" space that is both familiar and foreign to us. Thus, and contrary to what might be suggested by the participation of such a large number of musicians in the elaboration of the album, it finds its energy in this constantly renewed capacity to make the absent heard. This absence is certainly not played, but acts as a presence, a kind of “horizon inconnu” (unknown horizon) situated at the edge of our perception, abounding in unpredictable potentialities.

"How to describe what has never appeared to us," Delphine asks herself on the piece entitled "Loin" (Far). There is, of course, no definitive answer to this question. Perhaps only the belief in a collective that is in the process of becoming, that, through the forms of engagement requires that everyone (musicians and listeners) unearths all of the “sensations enfouies” (buried sensations) that allow us to catch a glimpse of other forms of life that are all the more fascinating, because they remain on the threshold of the “l’inexplicable".
crédits

credits

released January 22, 2020

Delphine Dora - piano, keyboards, vocals, field recordings, noises, stones
Aby Vulliamy - viola, accordion, recorder, musical saw
Paulo Chagas -bass clarinet, soprano clarinet, oboe, flute
Valérie Leclercq - flute, cymbal, percussion, tom drum, vocals
Adam Cadell – violin
Gayle Brogan - guitar (e-bow), zither (e-bow), stones, hammered dulcimer, violin, aeolian chimes (a sculpture by Fiona Sanderson)
Susan Matthews - harmonium, bass guitar, prepared piano
Le fruit vert (Andrea-Jane Cornell & Marie-Douce St-Jacques) - percussions, stones, analog synthesizer
Caity Shaffer – vocals
Taralie Peterson - saxophone, cello, zither, vocals
Sylvia Hallett - bicycle wheel, noises, hurdy gurdy, bowl, musical saw
Laura Naukkarinen – vocals
Tom James Scott – piano
Jackie McDowell - vocals

Songs and music composed, performed, recorded, edited, mixed, produced by Delphine Dora
Lyrics by Delphine Dora except Songe by Pierre-Jean Jouve
Arrangements written by and recorded by Delphine Dora and all the musicians
Music and arrangements recorded between august and december 2018 in different locations (France, UK, Belgium, Portugal, USA, Canada, Australia, La Gomera)
Tracklist by Delphine Dora and Maxime Guitton
Mastering by Julien Grandjean
Art direction by Delphine Dora
Artwork by Marie-Douce St-Jacques
Layout by Marie Tourigny

A million thanks to all the musicians who contributed to the record. Special thanks to Sylvia Hallett and Valérie Leclerq for their technical assistance, observations and feedback: without them the record would have sounded much different. A big thank you to Marie-Douce St-Jacques for the artwork, to Gaëtan Seguin and Maxime Guitton from three:four and Michael Kreitz and Christophe Houyon from Meakusma for their support; and to Julien Grandjean for the mastering.
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Delphine Dora France

Delphine Dora est une musicienne, compositrice, improvisatrice de France. Sa musique iconoclaste peut se lire comme un travail de cartographie personnel, basée sur une approche intuitive de la composition et nourrie de nombreuses approches. Elle développe depuis une dizaine d’années un univers musical intimiste et pluriel, en perpétuel métamorphose situé au croisement de différents genres musicaux ... more

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