Turner Williams Jr.'s music unfolds like a crossroads, where ancient and modern traditions intersect and attract each other. We hear American Primitive Guitar (Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Sandy Bull), the trance of Indian ragas, melancholy of Celtic ballads, the most experimental side of French folk revival (René Zosso, Rémy Couvez, Pierre-Jean Croset, Valentin Clastrier), while allowing the memory of even more ancient music to filter through (Marin Marais, François Couperin). He reinvents these roots as he progresses through the years, a gesture inscribed in a singular path, a minimal impressionism crisscrossed by folk influence, following his scene peers Lise Barkas, Megabasse, Clément Vercelletto, Memotone …
Leaving behind the fuzzy landscape of Briars On A Dewdrop (Feeding Tube Records, 2022) and the post-psychedelic loops of Ensoleillée (Les Disques Omnison 2023), Turner's shahi baaja is alone, more than ever. The nakedness of the means employed and the purity of the instrument lay bare its fragility and intensify the experience. Walking into the void to the extreme, to see this obscure object of desire appear in overwhelming clarity. Here, simplicity is a path, and revelation is only possible at the price of abandonment. A true sense of quest reminiscent of Michel Vieuchange's pursuit of the mirage of Smara in 1930, coupled with the hallucinatory and opiated aspect of Burroughsian Interzone, the maze of Borges' Aleph, and the isolation of Le Clézio's desert.
Rather than dwelling on the danger that such desolate landscapes might suggest, Vipérine leans toward a gentler horizon, its ethereal atmosphere carrying more solace than threat. We are flickering in a pure balance between serenity and emptiness that reminds of Brian Eno’s prodigious variations on Johann Pachelbel’s Canon In D Major. Feeling adrift.
After years of DIY touring across the world, Turner has not only forged an original voice for the shahi baaja and his delirious pedalboard, but also developed a unique feel for constructing splendid mosaics of his improvisations, of this music that came from nowhere and is now forever etched on record, for all to hear. This is the ideal moment for him to release his first album on his own label mistralph0ne… Pure beauty, more than just another stone to the ever-expanding edifice of the 21st Century French underground, Vipérine is a new desert island disc to my ears, a chamber music for the years to come.
- Tom Val, Les Disques Omnison
