Bonbon Flamme Calaveras Y Boom Boom Chupitos
Bonbon Flamme's founder, cellist Valentin Ceccaldi, has long been recognised as one of the leading figures on the French jazz scene, and in recent years he has been gaining recognition across Europe with a growing number of French and international groups, including Kutu. BMC has also played its part in this success, with the release of his latest, highly successful duo album with Leïla Martial.
Bonbon Flamme’s first album was one uninterrupted flow of improvisational music. This time, the quartet of French, Portuguese and Belgian musicians have chosen a slightly different approach: the avant-garde, noisy sound has been toned down to allow a more polished, yet extremely spicy and intense musical world to come to the fore. In January 2024, Ceccaldi returned home from Mexico full of inspiring experiences: the vibrant colours of nature and streets, the acidity of lemon, the sweetness of avocado, the fire of chilli pepper, the omnipresent violence and death, the relationship with ancestors and with religion… These experiences are captured in the compositions for Bonbon Flamme's new recording, elaborated together with his bandmates. Childish melodies and rhythms burst into a jungle of sounds, then giving way to almost meditative, eerily beautiful moments.
In their hyper-colourful, handcrafted collage, freedom, tenderness and wild beauty come together in an experience that is at once sour, sweet and spicy.
Artists
Valentin Ceccaldi – cello, synthesizer (5)
Luís Lopes – guitar, synthesizer (5)
Fulco Ottervanger – upright piano, synthesizers, voice Étienne Ziemniak – drums, electronic, synthesizer (5)
About the album
All compositions by Valentin Ceccaldi
except track 5 by Étienne Ziemniak, track 6 by Scott Joplin and tracks 7, 8 by Fulco Ottervanger Recorded by Zsolt Kiss at BMC Studio, Budapest on 8-10 February, 2024
Mixed by Mathieu Pion
Mastered by Pierre-Emmanuel Meriaud
Artwork: Anna Natter / Cinniature
Produced by László Gőz
Label manager: Tamás Bognár
In association with Tricollectif
Reviews
Jean-Jacques Birgé - Le Club de Mediapart (fr)
Guillaume Malvoisin - pointbreak.fr (fr)
Olasz Sándor - riff (hu)
Bonbon Flamme - Calaveras Y Boom Boom Chupitos
The album is available in digital form at our retail partners
It does not often happen that I am blown away by a band at its first concert. But it happened with Bonbon Flamme at le Dynamo in Paris. It hit me like a rock.
Four musical personalities that have bands in their own name and play together as if this was their only band. These are all incredible musicians and each one adds his own particular flavour to Valentin Ceccaldi’s wondrous compositions. They may guide you through a landscape of dark, eerie sounds that lead to a meadow of green grass under a blue sky. It sometimes feels like walking through a waterfall and entering a cave full of gloomy colours. Childish melodies and rhythms burst into a jungle of sounds. There is this sparkle of humour that lightens up the music.
It’s that magic combination that makes this so special. It’s actually captured in the band’s name. Bonbon is French for ‘a sweet’ and ‘Flamme’ is a flame. An imaginary cocktail of delicate lyricism and bursts of energy.
I remember that concert sent me off to the streets of Paris as a happy man. This is their second recording, and listening to it, its intense wild beauty fills me again with joy.
Wim Wabbes
(former Europe Jazz Network president)
Humans are full of paradoxes and opposing forces.
They demonstrate, for better or for worse, limitless creativity.
This is what fascinates me in life, and it is the starting point for the music that I imagine with Bonbon Flamme.
Each of the meetings with Étienne, Luís, and Fulco had the effect of a bomb on me. All three of them dazzled me with their freedom, their deep tenderness, and the intensity with which they play and live music.
The first repertoire that we created in 2022 was a long uninterrupted piece, composed to highlight all these qualities and build an initial playground where we could meet.
In January 2024, I returned full of sensations from a trip to Mexico. Everything inspired me there: the omnipresent colours in nature or in the streets, the tastes, the acidity of the lemon, the sweetness of the avocado, the fire of the chilli pepper, the omnipresent violence, the omnipresent death, the relationship with ancestors, with religion...
Contrasts and intensity, everywhere, all the time (that was in any case my perception at that time).
The next Bonbon Flamme album was being built in my head, it will then be about heritage, views on life and death, lemon and chilli pepper.
If you are reading these words, it is probably because you have this record in your hands or between your ears. I hope that after listening to it, you will be left with a tingling in your mouth or in your heart.
Valentin Ceccaldi
My deepest thanks go to Fulco, Étienne, Luís, the entire BMC team, the entire Tricollectif team, and especially to Mathieu Pion and Pierre-Emmanuel Meriaud for the extraordinary sound work they did on this record.
Calaveras Y Boom Boom Chupitos is dedicated to Manon and Otto, to lime and hot pepper.