PHOTONS ^[FR]

One night, the basses hit you in the gut, rattle your bones, creep up your spine, and unsettle your brains until they finally give in – that’s the sort of trance electronic music can produce. For Gauthier Toux, the revelation came one evening in 2016 at a club in Lausanne officiated by a techno DJ. A classically-trained pianist, then an adept of cerebral jazz, he was struck physically by the synthetic sounds and the pace of the machines, to the extent that the experience fractured the whole edifice he had built up as as an academic instrumentalist. And that’s how the Photons project began. 

Photons marks a new direction in an artistic career that is all the more fascinating in that it traces the artist’s personal development. Born in Chartres in 1993, Gauthier Toux had all the qualities of a good student, a studious interpreter of the Conservatoire repertory. Even during his secondary school years, he immersed himself, with the persistence of a geek, in the jazz of Tigran Hamasyan, Avishai Cohen and Ambrose Akinmusire – that and reggae, the intoxicating beat of which had a lot to do with what came afterwards. Childhood, teenage years, adulthood. At the age of 18, his admission to the jazz department of the Haute École de Musique (HEMU) in Lausanne brought him into contact with the network of musicians within which he was to forge many of his future collaborations. Not only that, but his new friends also introduced his ears to Roy Hargrove & The RH Factor and the Robert Glasper Experiment – which connect jazz to funk and rap – in the Lausanne clubs, where in endless jam sessions he played away at the Fender Rhodes, while experimenting with groove and synthetic music. The first two albums released by the Gauthier Toux Trio, More Than Ever (2015) and Unexpected Things (2016), followed the lead of some of their contemporaries, from Brad Mehldau to The Bad Plus. Above all, the names of James Blake, Kaytranada, Disclosure and other producers of dubstep, house and techno infiltrated its playlists. He acquired a Prophet ’08 analogue synthesiser. Then, on a Lausanne dancefloor, he had the famous brainwave!

After all, jazz was for a long time dance music, and there’s a tendency to go back in that direction under the influence of a new generation, to which Gauthier Toux belongs. He himself dances all night long. At the Rex Club in Paris, to which he relocated in 2017, he never missed the house sets of DJ Spinna or Kerri Chandler. He was a regular visitor to the barge, home of the legendary Paris club-collective Concrete; he delved with delight into the discographies of those godfathers of techno Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin and Laurent Garnier, listened to Motor City Drum Ensemble’s Boiler Room, Immunity by Jon Hopkins, and Moderat’s III, and went back to take a look at Steve Reich’s minimalism. With the help of friends he had met in Lausanne – the guitarist Erwan Valazza and trumpeter Zacharie Ksyk of the group mohs, and of course saxophonist Léon Phal, with whose quintet he has played keyboards since its first album in 2019 – things were set in motion. Last but not least, that was a time of collaborations with Anne Paceo, Vincent Peirani and Guillaume Perret; he toured with them, taking along his Fender Rhodes and Prophet ’08. But then all that effervescent activity was brought to a halt by the Covid crisis. 

But in the end the lockdowns led to some remarkable albums, conceived in extraordinary circumstances. The Photons project is the result of crazy nights and empty days. Stuck at home after the release of his album For a Word (featuring the singer Léa Maria Fries), Gauthier Toux, played around with his Prophet ’08, a Roland TR-08 rhythm composer and a sequencer, and came up with some electronic sounds somewhere between house, techno and 2-step. Summer 2020 saw the first rave, a techno remix for Samba De La Muerte and private evenings spent learning all about DJing. He is a close friend of singer Isabel Sörling and violinist Théo Ceccaldi, both originally jazz musicians, but who now integrate electro into their music. After taking part in the very successful Dust to Stars album in 2021 with increasingly house-oriented Léon Phal, Gauthier Toux released in 2022 The Biggest Steps with his acoustic trio, and with a prepared piano giving a foretaste of things to come. 

In the atmosphere of excitement that accompanied the reopening of the clubs, much of what followed was written at La Gare, a Parisian jazz club that has the particularity of offering musicians long-term residencies to enable them to develop ambitious projects. There, on his synthesisers, every Wednesday evening, Gauthier Toux experimented with long electronic improvisations, together with Théo Ceccaldi. When the violinist was away, he brought together for the first time drummer Julien Loutelier (Émile Parisien Quartet) and the double-bass player Samuel F’hima (Daïda, Clélya Abraham). Two 45-minute sets later, he knew he had his next project! They were joined during that creative residency by guitarist Giani Caserotto (Théo Ceccaldi and Freaks). Adopting the codes of electronic music within an organic ensemble: we think of Magnetic Ensemble, and especially Cabaret Contemporain, of which both Julien Loutelier and Giani Caserotto are members. But Gauthier Toux’s personality, his talent as a composer and his temerity as an improviser guarantee his uniqueness. 

The photon (from the Ancient Greek word for “light”) is an elementary particle involved in electromagnetic interaction. And interaction and energy lie at the heart of the Photons project, which was officially launched on stage at La Petite Halle in Paris in November 2022, on the first evening of a residency that lasted until June 2023. The quartet recorded its first two tracks, which were to feature in 2023 on the Studio Pigalle compilation, bringing together young groups influenced by Bill Evans and Roy Hargrove as much as by J Dilla and Jeff Mills. In that same legendary studio, Photons recorded the album La Nuit Sans l’Ennui, a title reflecting the quartet’s penchant for noctambulism. Gauthier Toux, who opted for an Oberheim OB-6 synthesiser, is an artist who thinks long and hard. Nothing is left to chance, especially not the narration from one end to the other in the form of two waves with a trough between them, in the manner of DJs who know how to string a thread through their sets. A bright opening to an album full of light and shade, Craquements initially follows in a similar vein to The Biggest Steps, but then a dizzying break sends it into a technoid ambience. Welcome to the world of Photons! Then, in Liés, rapper Le Juiice has a dark flow, and the virulent lyrics shed light on her condition as a black woman… in a group of white men. 

Gauthier Toux has often composed, on machines, acrobatic rhythms which Julien Loutelier then reproduces on the drums. We hear this on La Nuit sans l’Ennui, partly inspired by the Dutch duo Weval, with its epic build-up tending towards the French touch. Marked by Samuel F’hima’s double bass (every note weighs a ton), Le Piège belongs to the sub-genre of hip-hop known as trap, and it ends with an intense piano solo. 

With Pause we reach the trough between the waves: recurrent guitar layers recall Brian Eno and his Ambient series. The reprise is all the more brutal with Comme un point, a caustic breakbeat that would do Aphex Twin proud. Kate Stables, a leading light of British folk, ventures into pop electronica with Tout et son contraire, possibly echoing For a word – to be compared with Moderat. With its synthesiser and guitar layers, its thick bass line and unchanging drum pattern, Orbe de lumière is the only linear track in the set, unfolding like an aurora borealis. As for La Vie Partie Trois, referring to Gauthier Toux’s condition as a thirtysomething husband and father, it assumes its techno ascent, heading straight for trance. 

Photons embrace it all, from IDM, intelligent dance music, intended for home listening, to tech-house, to be experienced in the clubs, while respecting the markers of electronic music, with a strongly contrasting production at the mixing stage. The performance is astonishing, coming from an organic quartet, adding to its array of talents jazz improvisation, guiding the solos and collective digressions. 

Nothing is consensual, much is radical. The night is promising… 

MUSICIANS 
Gauthier Toux keyboards 
Giani Caserotto guitar 
Samuel F’hima double bass 
Julien Loutelier drums