ENGLISH // FRENCH
URBAN FOLK
MUSIC FROM
SWITZERLAND
After a first folk album in 2013, Fairytales At Half Past Six, Alf Pastix released High, an album steeped in urban melancholy.
Normal people emerge when he goes to bed, after a night of composing. From the wee hours, or more specifically half past six, the musician Max Torche, drew his stage name, Alf Pastix. This was his first folk record that set him up on the local scene in 2013; Cajon, violin, piano, bass, saxophone and guitar formed the acoustic setting for his voice. His unique voice (between Jake Bugg and Bob Dylan without really taking after either of them, racy, and nasal without being negative) is found again on the new album, High.
Alf Pastix has changed a lot, from a sextet to a duo to deploy his urban melancholy with meticulous pulsations, alternating between dancing and downtempo, which punctuate the cyclic chords of an arpeggiated guitar. There is naivety in these spacy tracks, but also a real sound carried by a production full of electronic effects by Dami3n. Bertrand Siffert, sound engineer of The Young Gods with an experienced hearing, was in charge of bringing the final touch to the fourteen tracks. The album is backed by a CXVII -visual aesthetic made of pink and grey, dark and pop like an oxymoron.
©TR/LaLiberté