Life On Mars? is Yann Viet’s second album. Its repertoire, made half of covers (french chanson, jazz classics or pop…) and half of the guitarist’s compositions, offers exquisite melodies, often very rich from an harmonic point of view. Every detail has been tastefully thought out, from the structures, the tone’s combination, to the instrumentation’s choice for each piece (from solo to sextet). The rhythmic part is composed of Michel Jullien on the battery, the amazing Marc Éliard on the bass guitar, double bass and accordion, and Jaco Largent – who has been part of the band Sixun for many years – on percussions. On the B3 organ, melodica and clavietta, we can hear William Lecomte (preferred pianist of famous violinist Jean-Luc Ponty for a very long time) and Sylvain Gontard and Gilles Relisieux on the trumpets and bugles. As for Yann Viet, he is very inspired from one end to the other, playing indifferently acoustic and electric guitar with a feeling revealing a remarkable sensitivity. While listening, we can not help but think of musicians who put lyricism, elegance, fluidity and sound quality before anything else, such as Pat Metheny, Larry Carlton, Philip Catherine… Here, guitar choruses are extremely well constructed and developped from phrase to phrase in a very natural way.
The digipack and its booklet, very well documented are particularly nice. On the top of that, there is a second CD, including seven bonus tracks, where we can find the music scores (in .PDF format) of a good number of the pieces from this album.
Life On Mars? is available for ordering on website : www.jazzandcrunchguitar.sitew.fr
