Label: Pyroclastic Records, 2021

Personnel: Benoit Delbecq: piano, prepared piano.

By curbing any conventional direction for his music, the classically-trained Paris-based pianist Benoit Delbecq takes us to uncharted territories that are sometimes challenging to explore. That’s the case with this recording, The Weight of Light, his first solo effort in more than a decade.

Motivated by movement-centric perspectives on shadow and light, Delbecq’s frameworks encapsulate prepared piano for a robust rhythmic feel, as well as improvised lines that search for a flow, whether when aimlessly digressing or tracing a calculated route.

Three pieces from the excellent jazz quartet album Spots on Stripes (Clean Feed, 2018) resurface here, obviously with completely different shapes, moods and colors. Whereas “The Loop of Chicago” concedes a space to an ancient feel that stems from the percussive left-hand work (with prepared piano) alongside the modern creative pianism, “Dripping Stones” pricks us with pungent chromaticism in the harmonic movements. In turn, “Broken World” feels less rhythmically synthetic and consequently more mellifluous and emotional.

If “Family Trees”, another previously recorded selection, increases the sense of rootiness with its mbira-like rhythmic fluxes, “Chemin Sur Le Crest” envelops us in a cloud of hypnotic rhythm and relentless melody. Like on other pieces, I kept sensing a primitive side that bonds with the bright contemporary touches.

Nevertheless, my absolute favorites on the album are “Anamorphoses” and “Pair Et Impair”. The former, organically designed and sonically captivating, combines exotic portions of melody and droning ideas with ritualistic tendencies; the latter, impeccably synchronized and erratic on the beat, has a danceable quality to it, feeling lightly skittering in the keyboard approach.

Eschewing dense textures, Delbecq delivers exactly enough. Everything is laid bare on behalf of a peculiar atmosphere.