Le carnet noir

Four years have passed since the group's last studio outing An Delienn, not including the live album En Concert, and here's Bran with their new CD titled Le carnet noir. Once again, Bran brings us the music of the Celtic Brittany – traditional dances and songs with a touch of the mystical, drawing on old Breton lore, as well as the melancholy and adventure of sea shanties.

The tracks on the album, whose title translates as The Black Notebook, can be divided into three groups. The first includes original arrangements of traditional songs in Breton; the introductory Marzhin Foll gives an unusual account of Merlin as an embittered antihero; Tri Martolod, the sea song made famous by Alan Stivell, is a kind of a gift by the band for their fans; a slightly idiosyncratic yet sublime arrangement of the traditional Yuletide song Pe trouz war an douar is the group's tongue-in-cheek answer to growing demands for a 'Breton carol'.

Then there are the songs in French: the heart-chilling, balladic  Quand je menai mes chevaux boire, originally from Normandy; the pop-jazz, yet acoustic sound of La jument de Michao; the frivolousness and, in Bran's repertoire, untypical major tonality of Lundi Mardi; or the not-so-slight eroticism and double-entendres of Le Phare, based on the poem by Brittany's own poète maudit, Tristan Corbière.

Interspersed between the songs are some instrumentals, all but Laridée-gavotte original compostions by the members of the group, including the founder and former singer David Pajot and the accordion player Tomáš Görtler, but mainly coming from the CD's producer and guitar player  Vojtěch Jindra: the An dro, based on the rhythm of the traditional dance of the same name; the eponymous waltz Le carnet noir, inspired in part by Yann Tiersenn's film scores; and the final number La croisée with Pajot's voice calling to us from over the Atlantic, where he moved after En concert had came out.

It was David's black notebook in which he used to scribble his song ideas that gave the album  its name and the CD sleeve its worn and ragged look with yellowed pages. On its pages, Bran has thus symbolically entered a new chapter in its history, proving its vigour after David's departure.

Tracklist:

1. Marzhin Foll
2. Tri martolod
3. Laridée-gavotte
4. Quand je menai mes chevaux boire
5. La jument de Michao
6. An dro
7. Lundi mardi
8. Le carnet noir
9. Pe trouz war an douar
10. Le phare
11. La croisée