NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM ( NNMM )

NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM, a.k.a. NNMM and their multiple «Arkestra» formulas, was initiated by Guillaume Cazalet with the veteran saxophonist Jean Jacques Duerinckx in Brussels in 2018, during a residency with two drummers Sebastien Schmit and Pierre Arese.
The result of this meeting was a bifacial entity, sometimes calling for a primitive voodoo trance with percussive intonations, dominated by rhythm and a savage movement, sometimes towards a psychedelic meditation with prophetic and spiritual accents resting on amplified drone music where time is explored, harmony, the power of the tonic and its iridescent harmonics, durability, weight, ruin. All of that was the result of a free improvised music process.
From this residency was born an epic trilogy album called ÉONS released on I, Voidhanger Records, after their first EP, The Conference Of The Stars, released on the label Homo Sensibilis Records, mixing drone metal and spiritual free jazz, animated by a cosmic and psychedelic energy.
By exploring the evolution of the human species, particularly through the use of speculative texts in Homo-sapiens prototypal language (*Pierre Lanchantin), they question the future of living on earth. They try to create a sense of acceptance of the end of the "Anthropocene" era through a soteriological musical experience.
Between 2019 and 2023, Reshma Goolamy, Romain Martini, Didié Nietzche, Joaquin Bermudez, Alice Thiel, Stephane Fedele & Lukas Melville joined the project that takes the form of the “Arkestra”. I
In 2020, they released the album Solar Drone Ceremony which now balances free improvisation and composition into a psych space opera of doom, free jazz and krautrock, followed in 2021 and 2022 by two live albums, Set The Chaos To The Heart Of The Moon (Roadburn Redux, NL) and Finis Gloriae Mundi (Doornroosje, NL).
The collective have proposed several pieces of work and live acts consisting in various line-ups, multiple sound/space explorations, and diverse creation techniques and protocols.
Still making a syncretic form of music, NNMM begins 2024 on a turning point : a fresh line-up and a new album recorded live in a church at the Judgement Hall Festival in London by the end of 2023, exploring Indian classical music using amplified and fuzzy instruments. This new era will show a different view on music and devotion. Guided by Guillaume who deeply learns and practices Indian classical music mostly under the guidance of famous sitar player Roopa Panesar, NNMM is now looking for the absolute emotional power of Hindustani music with as much respect as possible for this culture in their exploration of the Raags, their new spiritual weapon for reaching the soteriological musical experience.
The premiere of this new album will take place at The Roadburn Festival 2024. NNMM will explore three Ragas (or Raags): Raag Marwa, Raag Todi and Raag Bairagi. Raag means color in Sanskrit. And a Raag is exactly that ; each Raag uses a defined scale and many other rules that the players can improvise on. Each Raag illustrates an emotion, a devotion and can be played in a precise time frame on day or night, seasons, or for many reasons like summoning rain or fire.
NNMM will offer a dive into their renewed minds, still calling for the beginning of a new era.