First round, Edges’ first digital EP release in November 2021, announced this full-length album available in vinyl and to download. This is also the track that opens “The End of the F***ing world”: the music pours out, almost liquid. A tight Vesuvian magma of sound. Thermal shock. No need for an instruction manual, a neurotic deciphering or a school primer.

Nine tracks that recall the classic lords of riff, such as Robert Fripp of vintage King Crimson or the skilful sonic diversions of New Yorker Marc Ribot. One thinks especially of a totally liberated Guillaume Vierset, freewheeling and on fire. Zappa would have loved I Love Triads and its infernal scoubidou of instruments in heat.

You have to hear Doctor Bartholomé – dedicated to the leader of Sharko, whom Guillaume has accompanied for four years – to measure the extent of the firework show led by Vierset and his impressive accomplices. Meet American drummer Jim Black (Alas No Axis, Tim Berne, Ellery Eskelin or Kurt Rosenwinkel), the Danish bassist Anders Christensen (heard alongside Tomasz Stanko, Jakob Bro, Paul Motion or Aaron Parks), and the Franco-Brusselsian Dorian Dumont (Echt!), on keyboards.

David Bartholomé (Sharko) lays his voice down on the title track, at the end of the record. A moment of twilight singularity, cosmic, redeeming. In keeping with the meaning of Edges: on the border. The outer limits of a world in perdition. Perhaps saved by music.

We can still dream, can’t we?

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