There’s a peculiar magic in a stroll. It’s not a march, nor a sprint, but a meander — wandering without urgency, where time folds like a map and the scenery becomes the story. Gilles Gobeil’s Promenades captures this unhurried magic, offering seven pieces that aren’t just strolls in the sonic sense but excursions into imagination, memory, and reflection.
A veteran of acousmatic music, Gobeil has long been a master of crafting soundscapes where reality and the abstract coalesce. In Promenades, he draws inspiration from all corners — film, improvisation, and even the quiet poetry of everyday life. The album feels like an intricate scrapbook, with each piece representing a page where sound, narrative, and texture intermingle.
Take the opening track, Un cercle hors de l’arbre, which could be the soundtrack to an imaginary dérive through a forgotten forest, its fixed medium bubbling with subtle tensions. Or Sentinelle, where Yves Charuest’s alto saxophone emerges like a beacon in the vastness of space, tethered to Gobeil’s fixed medium in a haunting dialogue that feels like the auditory equivalent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And then there’s Sous l’écorce des pierres — promenade, a tribute to Folkmar Hein, where every sound feels like a step crunching over Berlin’s storied streets. It’s contemplative and cinematic, evoking both the passage of time and the permanence of memory. Meanwhile, Associations libres, the album’s shortest track, delivers a jolt of spontaneous energy as Patrice Soletti’s electric guitar tangles with Gobeil’s fixed medium — a frenetic sprint in an otherwise meditative journey.
The ensemble Déviation(s) shines in Détour, where violin, cello, and guitar weave an intricate tapestry of sound, their improvisational impulses tethered yet free, like a bird circling an open sky. It’s both structured and uncharted, an echo of the ensemble’s name and ethos.
With Dans l’air du soir, Gobeil invites us into Debussy’s dreamscape, where the air shimmers with twilight hues. François Couture’s piano whispers like a distant lullaby, delicate yet grounding. And closing the album is La vie se repose, a tender homage to the late sculptor Oscar Wiggli. Here, Gobeil crafts an auditory meditation on stillness, with textures that feel like they’re breathing — soft, slow, and alive.
What makes Promenades so captivating is Gobeil’s ability to create music that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant. His use of fixed medium doesn’t isolate but rather invites — each piece is an open-ended story where listeners are free to insert their own experiences, memories, and musings.
As a whole, Promenades is less an album and more a collection of sonic essays. It meanders, reflects, and occasionally surprises, but always remains true to its central theme: the art of the stroll. Gilles Gobeil has crafted an album that doesn’t just ask you to listen — it asks you to wander.
