After two albums entirely devoted to dreamy, minimalist melodies played solo on the piano, Alban Claudin opens his music up to new horizons. With III, the composer embellishes his short pieces with arrangements for strings, winds or organ, painting delicately contrasting landscapes, sheltered from the clamour of the world. Concise and appealing, alternately minimalist or more densely romantic, his compositions form an ambitious album – the full expression of an artist in motion.

When he titled his first album It’s a Long Way to Happiness in 2021, Alban Claudin knew that what mattered here was the journey – patiently mapped out since childhood, open to encounters and adventures, winding its way between familiar landscapes and places of refuge. Until now, these refuges have taken the form of two albums in which the composer has displayed his artistry in melody alone at the piano, in a slight retreat from the world as we inhabit it, fast-paced, stimulating, saturated with images and sounds. Although III was born in the same place, in the metaphorical tranquillity of the place where one retreats into oneself to compose and the more concrete tranquillity of the Burgundy landscapes where Alban Claudin regularly recharges his batteries, this third album opens up to other horizons. The piano is still at the heart of these delicate, organic structures, but it often dialogues with other instruments – saxophone, bass clarinet, violin, cello, organ – which the composer dreamed of including from an early age and for which he wrote the arrangements himself.

Always guided by pure and agile melodies, his pieces are illuminated in a different light, and III captivates with its art of contrast, the precision of its lines and the richness of its colours. Alban Claudin engages in short, straight runs inherited from the minimalists (“The Run”, piano strings struck in rhythm and a cavalcade of winds; “L’échappée”, organ, ebb and flow of strings; “L’Île”, piano and light electronic treatment) as well as romantic escapades (the almost waltz-like “Of Love” or “Origami”, unfolding into a moving profusion of strings). Some very short pieces capture a moment apart, floating, like “Phantasia”, whose dense, undulating melody eventually fades away in a brief maze of strange sounds. Throughout the album, Alban Claudin’s sense of melody and skillful arrangements are combined with a bold, pointillist approach to sound textures, making it both homogeneous and unique. References can be made to Max Richter or Yann Tiersen, Ólafur Arnalds or Nils Frahm, American minimalists or early 20th-century French composers, in a constant balance between the spontaneity of experimental pop and the melancholy of ambient music.

Ólafur Arnalds or Nils Frahm, Jessica Moss or Andrew Bird, American minimalists or early 20th-century French composers, in a constant balance between the spontaneity of experimental pop and the rigour of the score, the composer’s music – refined in solitude in a studio from which he draws the maximum – is difficult to reduce to a single label.

In this respect, it is the fruit of a long and rich journey. For while in the eyes of his growing audience, Alban Claudin is a young figure on the music scene, appreciated for his albums, his invigorating concerts and his intrepid covers encapsulated in videos that have gone viral, the musician is multiplying his experiences and collaborations. His past as a drummer in rock bands, his journey into composing for film and television, and his work in the studio and on stage alongside his peers – La Féline, Clara Luciani and Mika – have allowed him to refine and assert the uniqueness of his personal projects. III is the radiant and intense work of a composer who has chosen to invent his own path by following his intuition. Born of a tension between a taste for movement and the call of calm, the rumbling of torment and the search for inner fulfilment, the 13 tracks that make up the album harbour places, emotions and feelings, and will themselves be refuges for anyone who surrenders to them.