New album by organist Maxime Denuc: An organ that breathes more than it plays

What connects Kali Malone (USA) with Gigi Masin (Italy), Anushka Chkheidze (Georgia), Kit Downes (England), Philipp Sollmann (Germany), the Swede Anna von Hausswolff? They're really messing around. Some work on experimental organ installations (Sollmann), others play jazz in Cologne Cathedral (Downes); Malone, on the other hand, docks into the doom metal subgenre. All of those mentioned draw inspiration from the long, primarily European cultural history of the church instrument in an interesting way.

For most organists, canons, crab courses or partimenti sit loosely like pistols on the holsters of trigger-happy cowboys, which immediately creates a bridge to the baroque via the musical instrument. What is striking is how close this solidarity can be - and how popular organ music is at the moment: When a concert by organ influencer Anna Lapwood is announced on TikTok, 10,000 people sometimes line up and demand entry. Neither Bach nor Handel achieved anything comparable.

With Maxime Denuc, a French keyboard enthusiast, you don't actually have to look far for baroque influences. The artist, who has lived in Brussels for a long time, makes no secret of his (pre)influence. Both on his debut solo album “Nachthorn” (2022) and on the Plapla Pinky project (with Raphael Hénard), baroque and early baroque are always recognizable as references.

Maxime Denuc: “Club Imperiale” (light years/Word&Sound)

This impression is now changing with Denuc's new album “Club Imperiale”. The greeting is hypnotic, much more ecstatic than one would be familiar with from the early modern period. Denuc's “Hallucinogen” is immediately reminiscent of drug-induced ecstasy in pill form that pleasure-seeking partygoers place on each other's tongues with empathetic passion at night.

A decisive ostinato, played on the organ in particularly brisk, cotton-wrapped attacks, provides the foundation for a five-minute rush, during which rich bass tones contrapuntally give you goosebumps. 140 bpm leaves the expert listener in no doubt as to who or what was the inspiration for this unusual organ composition: Trance.

The album title also promises clear dance floor feelings: The eponymous “Club Imperiale”, located in Tirrenia on the Tuscan Mediterranean coast, achieved world fame in the late 1980s and is considered one of the cradles of the “Progressive Trance” movement in Italy. Long since closed, a fish restaurant now stands on the ruins of this establishment.

Yes, is this another man in his 40s lost in thought about the wild days of his youth? Does Denuc reminisce about dancing the night away on a dance floor with a view over the Ligurian Sea? By no means, the organist himself only came into contact with rave culture 20 years ago, and therefore over a decade too late. For him the sound is speculation, historical fiction if you will. “Impreza” with its shimmering hook comes closest to what you would call a trance track.

If you close your eyes and immerse yourself in this well-told story for a few moments, the sensory impressions shoot through your synapses: a laser show. Arms thrown up trying to capture the fractal light. The specific, synthetic smell of sweat. Grinding jaws and dilated pupils. A better world.

If you open your eyes, you find yourself... in a church. To be precise: in the Church of St. Antonius in Düsseldorf. Because it requires the most modern technology to achieve the collaboration between organ and trance. Help is approaching in the form of midi interfaces and digital individual tone control, as offered by the church building in the Oberkassel district and the built-in three-part organ.

The instrument maker Mühleisen, responsible for this little miracle, has done a great job: his instrument is considered - how ironic - a Mecca for modern organ modules. Scores can be composed on the computer, which the instrument later plays virtually by itself. Of course, this inspires modern composers like Maxime Denuc - and the better ones also know how to use this system and exploit its technology.

This is particularly impressive in the most reserved piece on the album: “Atlantis”. As if you were standing outside the church, the sounds of the organ reach us from a distance. You can hear the almost silent introduction of air; the machine breathes more than it actually plays. Nevertheless, there is great tension, one that can turn into the opposite.

It is music that is committed to post-pathos, does not want to be part of the neo-classical movement, but thinks almost obsessively in registers like “overwhelming”. But perhaps that is being judged too harshly: if the organ hadn't been played so prominently lately, then Denuc's new music would be celebrated as a great success. In any case, his album “Club Imperiale” doesn’t have to hide from the works that have already been published.