Naïal is a duet focusing on the bagpipe with the purpose of extending its musical capabilities through technology to create new and personal acoustic images. The type of bagpipe used by Naïal originated in the center of France and was up to now confined to traditional music. The use of digital sound processing as well as the confrontation to newer musical genres gives this ancient instrument a new life.
Naïal started by the meeting of two persons that could seemed unlikely to work together :
Stéphane Mauchand performing on several instruments (bagpipes, flutes, diatonic clarinet, vocals...) in the French traditional music scenes and Sedryk, coming out of the avant-garde music scene and who does not play any musical instrument.
Sounds like an impossible collaboration ? Fortunately life is not so simple : they found out that they actually have a lot in common from artistic influences to their personal vision of music and even of life. It became quickly obvious to them that there were going to make music together. After some discussion the project took a clear shape.
Naïal intends to focus on one musical instrument, the Centre-France bagpipe, to explore all its artistic capabilities with the aim of providing a new vision of it.
First Stéphane (who still performs traditional music in parallel) experiments with the sound of this versatile instrument which can be either sharp or soaring, dark or crazy. The pieces he wrote that way do not always follow traditional rhythmic patterns inherited from folkloric dances. Then Sedryk gets hold of this rich sonic material (the sound of the bagpipe is full of harmonics, with this particular tone which makes it so unique) and carves it through digital processing it as sculptor would do. The use of samples provides an atmosphere suitable for dreaming.
Naïal intentionally avoids fusing together a traditional tune with a beat for which it was not intended : both members write songs together with a common musical sensibility.
Much more than a confrontation this project is a meeting at the crossroad of traditional music and contemporary / new music, the meeting of a two thousand years old instrument with today's digital signal processing tools.
