Review: Julien Jabre's Southwind comprises music taken from the new eponymous experimental film, directed by visual artists Mark Pozlep and Maxime Berthou, and released in 2023. Jabre's bold chordwork and Moogish harmonic progressions complement the art of the Franco-Slovenian duo, intertwining sublimely with the film's evocative imagery to portray an America between two crises. The project, which involved descending the Mississippi aboard a homemade steamboat, began only a few months after one of the largest floods in the United States and ended just a few weeks before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the end of Donald Trump's presidency. With these recent historical events held firmly in mind, the album remains fixated on what lies beneath, undiscovered, with titles such as 'Deep Under', 'Hard Soul', 'Stagnant', 'Sluice' and 'Mud' presenting a clear imaginary and message: however bullish it may seem, modern America is a contemporary psychic dustbowl, through which more fluent waters must be led.
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