improvised songs of deep sadness and hopelessness played with heartbreaking beauty...
upcoming - new song cycle * Y O U *
Moody jazz electronica dream pop band Petits Machins breathes songs of deep sadness and hopelessness, played with heartbreaking beauty. Grounded in tradition of improvised music and drawing on stories of unrequited love and longing, they haunt the Brooklyn demimonde of dilapidated warehouses and half-deserted recording studios. New song cycle, * YOU * coming soon…
Photo by Ilya Popenko
Petits Machins is a dark and dreamy melodramatic song oriented jazz project with the elements of noise, avant-garde and dream pop. The project has been launched in 2013 by the two in-demand seasoned NYC jazz musicians (Svetlana Shmuyian, MA Manhattan School of Music - Wycliffe Gordon, Sullivan Fortner, Pasquale Grasso); Dmitry Ishenko (BA Berkley School of Music, MA New England Conservatory of Music - Steve Lacy, John Tchica, Paul Banks/Interpol ). The project emerged from three years of house sessions during which the collaborators explored the sound of jazz standards performed using pedals, loopers, and effects - it is then they recorded their first cover, Ray Noble’s "The Very Thought of You” which the group has transformed from a happy love song into a hyper-ballad, a hymn of longing and obsession. The band has also experimented with applying their sound to covering songs by the pen of Bjork, Kraftwerk, Radiohead, Portishead, and My Bloody Valentine (some of the band's influences).
It is also then that the project was named Petits Machins. Nodding to it's roots of improvisational jazz, straight-ahead and avant-garde jazz genres, and electronic music components, the project's name is borrowed from Miles Davis's compositions Petits Machins ("Little Things") (Filles de Kilimanjaro, 1968, album marking transition from acoustic to electric Miles "adventurous jazz, turning into something new") - and also, more literally, to signify the use of effect pedals (small tools) essential to project's sound. Once the project established it's sound in 2015, they have started to work on their song cycle *YOU* based on the songs composed by Svetlana - and engaged a drummer Chris Stromquist (Slavic Soul Party, Kultur Shock) in order to expand their sound-scape. In 2015 the project have made first recordings and played their first live shows, created experimental theatre sound-tracks, and played fully improvised sets. The project continues to refine their sound while exploring the improvisational nature of their music - and collaborating with visual artists to fully immerse the audience in the dreamy world they were creating.
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