French saxophonist and composer Sylvain Rifflet has his finger firmly set on the pulse of modern times. Working with his group Alphabet, he has masterminded an innovative and spell-binding brand of music in which the modernity of his jazz sound combines with the world of New York minimalism. Poets and writers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century often described the then-nascent ''industrial world'' and its machines as ''enemies of art.'' However some did not see progress as dehumanizing. Science fiction imagined a futuristic world, which inspired artists and writers such as Jules Verne and HG Wells. Rifflet's album Mechanics, with a cover illustration by Belgian comic book artist Francois Schuiten, journeys through forward looking and fantastical worlds.

By explicitly titling his new album “An Indian's Life”, double bassist and composer Henri Texier beautifully closes a sort of informal phonographic triptych — begun in 1993 with “An Indian's Week” and continued in 2016 with “Sky Dancers” — making the Native American cause and, beyond that, the quasi-mythological figure of the “Indian”, both the imaginary matrix and the poetic driving force of his artistic gesture. Because if in the end Henri Texier can claim in this new record to have managed once again to resonate with the Native American psyche, it is undoubtedly in this living relationship to memory, to ancestors, to tradition, that his music ( re)comes into play each time in such a sensitive way. Henri Texier will never be an Indian, he knows it, just as he will never be Charles Mingus - but both meet in his music and it is all his genius to make his most intimate voice heard through this imaginary dialogue.

This album explores the experience of foreigners in France. I see myself as belonging to a long genealogy of American artists who moved to Paris to escape the USA, a country that does not support its creators. Unlike my illustrious predecessors, I arrived in France during a pandemic that paralyzed the Parisian artistic scene.