Percorsi Musicali. Eyal Hareuveni. March 2026

The French free-improvising electroacoustic duo HANDSPEAK features Marcel Bataillard on two Kaoss Pads (real-time effects processors-samplers) and pianist Henri Roger. The Nice-based Bataillard is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the relationships among history, stories, memory, identity, and representation, tracing their source in myths and the collective imagination. Since the 1990s, the music of Monaco-based Roger has gravitated towards free-improvised and contemporary music, and he is always eager for challenging encounters to expand his musical palette.

The Fan is Bataillard and Roger’s second album, following I Burtuoni (Facing You, 2016), where they revisited Corsican heritage songs and contrasted them with contemporary electroacoustic music. Bataillard and Roger have been collaborating in multidisciplinary improvised settings since the early 2000s. The Fan is a DIY album recorded by Roger at his Facing You Studio in Villefranche-sur-Mer in June 2025 and released by his own label, Facing You. Bataillard did the graphic design. This album is the first to emerge from this session, and three more are expected to be released.

The atmosphere of The Fan is restrained and spacious, as if the six pieces attempt to sketch invisible, elusive sonic architectures, or as Roger and Bataillard put it : “searching for their place in the air”. Roger’s piano playing is fragmented, economic, and contemplative, almost as if it were hovering in the studio’s space. Bataillard’s almost silent Kaoss Pads introduce delicate and vulnerable wind-like intrusions, a misty dimension that suggests subtle resonances and timbres. Patiently, the calm dynamics transform toward tense, disquieting, and disorienting ones, cementing the fragile but still immersive landscapes of this electroacoustic meeting.

Percorsi Musicali. Eyal Hareuveni, march 2026.