Truth Premiere: Aurélien Bernard – (reed) [Feat. Shabaka Hutchings]

Filmmaker Aurélien Bernard records a imaginative routine of London jazz foundation Shabaka Hutchings in (reed), a brief meditation on the power of noise.

“I am a huge supporter of entry points – when you end that circle you constantly reach the center point,” states London jazz visionary and band leader Shabaka Hutchings in (reed), a meditative picture of the artist and writing on routine and imagination from filmmaker Aurélien Bernard. “The center point is a point of communality in the method that there is no sense of pressure in the sound,” continues Hutchings. “It feels like it is a really direct connection inbetween inhalation and exhalation.” The non-linear trajectory inbetween the entry point and the centre, mapped out by the artist with the audience in tow in the minute of efficiency, is the area Bernard checksout in (reed), tracing how a easy routine, like preparing a saxophone’s reed, can serve as a window into som of the mysterious power of noise.

“Since sounds vary in their external expression, this results in area extending inbetween function and
existence, inbetween efficiency and result,” describes Bernard. “It appears the muchdeeper we checkout the secret of sound, the more we are able to trace what’s linking them. These links are what the artist acknowledges as consistency, which asks how repeating and motions might effect, through rhythm and expression, the search for this consistency.” Though the course of this search may be unsure, Hutchings’ ceremonial method to efficiency allows an preliminary certainty, the veryfirst company grip of complex climb, something Bernard chooses out in monochromatic close focus, foregrounding his his fingers, his lips and his throat.

Setting Hutchings’ playing in counterpoint versus the foggy atmosphere of Space Afrika‘s 2018 contemporary traditional, Somewhere Decent To Live, Bernard exposes the procedure of finding strong types within clouds of what the artist explains as “an undefined source of energy, or power, or understanding, whatever you desire to explain it as.” As though coaxing raw blasts of blistering saxophone from Space Afrika’s dubbed-out spots, (reed) itself serves as a glance into Hutchings’ procedure, winding its method from words, the nascent triggers of motivation, through determined inhalation into an immediate exhalation, a burst of noise that showsup through the artist’s routine, from grounded reed to transcendent frequency.

You can discover Aurélien Bernard on Instagram. You can discover Shabaka Hutchings on Instagram and his site. You can discover Space Afrika on Instagram and at Bandcamp.

(reed) Credits:

Director – Aurélien Bernard
Post Production – Gianluca CGB
Sound Design – Strunk
Music – Space Afrika
Starring – Shaba