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1. Work 1.1 2. Miniauture 7 3. Attitude 4. Miniature 4 5. Work 1.2 6. Next  7. Next 3 8. Work 1.3 9. Next Alternate All compositions by Stéphane Payen (Work On Axis was comissioned by the State) Recorded by Silvio Soave at l'Estaminet (october 02) in Magny-les-Hameaux Mixed by Silvio Soave and Stéphane Payen at Studio CATI Audio (fall 03/spring 04) © Quoi de Neuf Docteur Production : Collectif Hask & Stéphane Payen

PRESS

Directed by Stéphane Payen (alto sax) and composed by Gilles Coronado (guitar), Hubert Dupont (electric bass and double bass) and Christophe Lavergne (drums), the group Thôt is a spin-off from the Hask collective, a Parisian galaxy of musicians in the wake of M’Base of Steve Coleman. They share his concerns of musical arithmetic, overlapping tempos and meters. Barren, the music of Stephane Payen reaps the fruits of his hard labor, growing more and more flexible and natural as time goes by. It deepens through real composition, showing rhythmic conceptions that contaminate melodic, harmonic and even orchestral aspects. Thôt welcomes recruits from the galaxies of Hask (the drummer Franck Vaillant, the saxophonist Guillaume Orti) and Belgian musicians with neighboring concerns: Pierre Bernard, Michet Massot, Antoine Prawerman, Pierre Van Doarmel, all improvisers and exceptional instrumentalists. With this « growth », it gains depth of field in this vertiginous exercise of illusion. A fascinating sound kaleidoscope ! Le Monde de la Musique (****)

Thôt Enlarged means Thôt gone up to the next level. Reaping the benefits of residency in l’Estaminet de Magny-les-Hameaux, the quartet has almost tripled by hiring 7 more musicians, partly coming from the Belgian scene. They’re partially doubled, since a second drummer, Frank Vaillant, has hooked on to the first, Christophe Lavergne; a second guitarist, Pierre Van Doarmel, joins Gilles Coronado; and even a second saxophonist, Guillaume Orti, takes his place next to Stéphane Payen, the leader of this ensemble and the architect of its repertory. But Thôt stretches also to deeper sounds when the tuba of Michel Massot doubles the bass of Hubert Dupont and weaves colors that the flutes of Pierre Bernard, the trumpet of Laurent Blondiau and the clarinets of Antoine Prawerman offer. Faithful to his compositional style, Payen has modeled a repertory that gradually unfolds its concentric circles, overlapping eccentric loops whose meeting points are on levels that reinforce the tension of their compositions. The colors remain obscure, strident sounds are allowed; we’re almost in a trance. When we’re so used to repetition we can be thrown off, but with the music rotating around itself, the unrelenting scrolling of its cycles is offered like a fascinating passing object for the soloists who are pushed out of their orbit. Luckily, the music leads to the light of epiphany that places the instrumentalist at the center Jazzman (****)

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