Argot

Blurring the line between electronic and acoustic music, Argot is a search for new virtuosic lyricism in the asyntactic chatter of music technology

The fourth full length album of Passepartout Duo and a deep investigation into how we communicate and collaborate with electronic devices, Argot is a reinterpretation of the synthesizer as an intelligent talking machine. Each track of the album features a kaleidoscopic mirroring of mystical electronic textures traced onto the surface of an acoustic grand piano. The synthesizer’s voice is characterized by gestural sways of simple harmonies that evoke an ancient air, and a sense of timeless contemplation. A lack of typical rhythmic backing makes the unknown language of the machine both unexacting and unpredictable, while the acoustic instrument reflects a search for lyricism in these atypical sounds that is rarely far from view.

Largely conceived as a studio album during a residency at the Electronic Music Studio in Stockholm, Argot was recorded on the 1970s Serge System: treating this enigmatic machine as a trusted writing partner, material often feels discovered rather than composed. The pieces make heavy use of speech melody transcription techniques, providing complex and often unidiomatic starting points for the piano parts.

The album rotates between the quirky, dramatic, doleful, and the sweet, at times evoking a Pärt-like simplicity that still retains its apparent crystalline essence in “Back in Time” and “Kissing in the Park, Briefly”. Anthemic, bright, or otherwise motoric moments contrast the still spaciousness of other tracks in “Get Along”, and “Imitates a Penguin”, during which a more percussive approach interleaves the peculiar melodic vocabulary of the electronics.

Diverging from the duo’s past releases, Argot features the contributions of musician friends from different corners of the world. In “Colorful Quartz”, virtuoso runs on Japanese traditional flutes rival the agility of the synthesizer, and delicately highlight the unstable nature of its tonality; a jazz-derived double bass strives to come afloat in the querulous “Uncommon”; and strangeness and serenity intersect with the emerging specter of a string quartet in “Viols and Violas, in Mus.”

The titling of the tracks is decidedly less serious than the music it represents. Derived from cross-word clues to reference the lingual nature of the music, the phrases become single line poems once stripped of their alternative meanings.

released November 29, 2024

Argot features guest musicians and home recordings by:

Alex Fournier - Double bass in tracks 6 and 8
Yuta Sumiyoshi - Shinobue and nohkan in 3
Invoke - String quartet in tracks 7 and 9

Argot was written and recorded by Passepartout Duo
(Nicoletta Favari & Christopher Salvito) at Elektronmusikstudion
in Stockholm, Sweden (March 2023) and at GMEA
in Albi, France (February 2024).

Cover artwork: Mouth, II, 2018, Silver Gelatin Print
© Deanna Pizzitelli / Courtesy of Stephen Bulger Gallery

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering in Bonn