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After his track “Hysope” represented the latest Chanel campaign for the launch of the Chanel n°1 range, Arandel unveils a rework of the track by Sicilian composer and violinist Francesca Guccione → Listen
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Recently adapted into an advertising campaign for the prestigious Chanel brand, Hysope is now resurrected as a three-track single following numerous online reactions. Revisiting in its foundations a seminal piece of JS Bach’s repertoire, Hysope brings together the original version from the album InBach (released in 2020), a rework by Italian composer and violonist Francesca Guccione and a completely new stripped-down version.
For one of Bach’s most beautiful and famous choirs (“Erbarm’ Dich Mein, O Herre Gott“, BWV 721), Arandel searched at length for the right material for the melody. What instrument? What lyrics? No instruments, but voices, an unprofessional choir. A bunch of friends singing together. No words, or rather other words, in French almost incomprehensible, almost erased, in which the articulation has been lost. Arandel has tightened and concentrated his music on the only music. The body accompanies the emotional journey and leads the dance, the trance. The choir no longer sings for the body of Christ, but for the body of the faithful.
Sicilian composer Francesca Guccione partitions the structure of the original score and makes a cello strings weep with emotion over the notes of the organ while constructing a new, resolutely cinematic narrative.
Freed from its beats and most of its original synthesized layers and textures, the stripped-down version sanctifies the choir and covers the organ with an unheard celestial veil.
About InBach : For his latest “InBach” series, released in January 2020 for the 1st volume, and July 2021 for the 2nd, Arandel had access to the gallery of instruments of the prestigious Musée de la Musique de Paris (most of which are rare and old historical pieces), in order to recompose and re-imagine key pieces of Bach’s repertoire. The result is a hybrid album with mutating contours, embracing indie-pop, French chanson and electronic music, which has been praised by the world’s specialist press (The Guardian, The Wire, The Times…) in its studio form and warmly welcomed by enthusiastic audiences in its live trio version, sometimes even accompanied by a string quartet and/or guests from both albums, wherever it has been performed.
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