Neo Pale Air

2016 three CD collection. As that noted hipster Plato once observed, when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake. And there was certainly a whole lotta shakin' goin' on in 1967. A distended Summer of Love saw psychedelic pop emerging from the underground clubs to infiltrate the home-grown music scene mainstream, with the vast majority following in the footsteps of perennial market leaders The Beatles in surrendering to the new genre. As the year progressed, it seemed that more or less every element of the British pop world had been swept up in the blissed-out UFOria. Beat boom survivors, R&B stalwarts, sharp-suited mods, Swinging London soul revues, earnest acoustic folkies, Denmark Street hustlers, traditional pop acts… all abandoned or refined their previous identities to make music that reflected the ubiquitous influence of psychedelia in it's myriad paisley-patterned guises. Across four hours and eighty tracks, the all-singing, not-much-dancing Let's Go Down And Blow Our Minds anticipates the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love to chronicle a tumultuous twelve-month period of music-making within the British Isles.

Following his Rossini recital (Alpha 791), Florian Sempey shares another of his passions: his enthusiasm for the world of knights and medieval narrative. For him, "a mysterious force emanates from castles and other antique buildings; their ancient stones have always fascinated me." Ferrum Splendidum (the Latin for 'Resplendent Metal') recalls the singer's ancestors, who were blacksmiths in the Perigord region. Though not following in that family tradition, Sempey concentrated instead on forging and moulding the metal of his brilliant baritone voice. Now a much sought-after opera soloist at the height of his art, he has devised a programme ranging widely through different heroic characters and operas, including Gretry's Richard the Lionheart, Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas, Meyerbeer's Le Pardon de Ploermel, as well as Tchaikovsky's opera The Enchantress, Wagner's Tannhauser, extracts from Carl Orff's famous neo-medieval cantata Carmina Burana, and even the premiere recording of a piece by Romain Dumas, Le Chevalier d'Eon, composed in 2019. Once again Florian teams up with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine and its young maestro Victor Jacob, who was named a 'Revelation' in the conductor category at the 2023 Victoires de la musique awards.