Léo Dupleix's "Round Sky" brings analogue synth, harpsichord, spinet, and just intonation into luminous balance. Performed with Asterales, the album unfolds in calm harmonic cycles and microtonal shifts that shimmer like light on water. From the deep resonance of "Poème d'air" to the glowing spinet arpeggios of the title track, Dupleix crafts music that feels both precise and tender—a spacious, quietly radiant exploration of tuned beauty.
Léo Dupleix returns to Black Truffle with "Round Sky", following the enchanting "
Resonant Trees" (BT119). The composer here performs on analogue synthesizer, harpsichord, and spinet as one member of Asterales, a group that brings together four important figures in the international community of musicians working with just intonation: Dupleix, Jon Heilbron (double bass), Rebecca Lane (quarter-tone flute), and Frederik Rasten (guitars). The quartet perform three recent pieces by Dupleix, each of which is like a different view on the same landscape of unruffled calm, where the unique harmonic events made possible by just intonation flicker across melodies and harmonies like light on the surface of water.
The first side is dedicated to "Poème d'air", composed while Dupleix was immersed in the music of 14th-century ars nova composer-poet Guillaume de Machaut. A sustained study of the "sonic possibilities of low-pitched sounds in just intonation", it begins with a long, rumbling pitch from Heilbron's bass, soon joined by the organ-like tones of the composer on synthesizer. The piece is made up of cycling sequences of chords, each of which is repeated for several minutes before the music either freezes on a single harmony or silently pauses before the next episode begins. These structures are initially dominated by the bass and synthesizer, with Lane's pure vibrato-less flute tone and Rasten's picked harmonics adding flashes of colour. As the piece develops, flute and guitar become more prominent and the bass climbs to higher registers. The development culminates in a stunning episode around fifteen minutes in where the texture thins out, casting a spotlight on a melodic figure exploiting the uncanny sound of Lane's quarter-tone flute.
On the second side we are treated to two briefer pieces, closer to the sound of "Resonant Trees" as they return harpsichord and spinet to the foreground. "Ghosts" centres on a harpsichord melody that slowly expands as it repeats, growing from a haunting six-note cell to a flowing succession of notes whose shape becomes increasingly difficult to perceive. Alongside this melodic development, an increasingly lush accompaniment grows, with long tones from bass, flute, e-bowed guitar, and synthesizer holding notes picked out of the harpsichord melody in a swaying harmonic cloud. Dupleix notes that the concluding "Round Sky" was written in the countryside in spring—a circumstance that seems far from irrelevant to the impression the piece makes when its euphonous spinet arpeggios emerge from a gentle synthesizer drone like a flower from a bud.
Performed as a duo with Rasten, with both instrumentalists also singing, this title piece exemplifies what makes Dupleix's music so unique: grounded in a rigorous application of just-intonation principles, yet as open as
Harold Budd or Andrew Chalk to an uncomplicated, intuitive experience of beauty.
Léo Dupleix (born 1988 in Paris) is a French composer and musician.
As a composer, he explores the possibilities of just intonation, taking as a starting point the harmonic spectrums of notes and their possible interaction. He develops music driven by an attraction to minimalism, polyphonic writing, ritournelle, ritual, and repetition.
He undertakes specific work with the harpsichord, for which he develops his own system of non-tempered tuning. This instrument is used within groups (such as Les Certitudes with
Félicie Bazelaire and Juliette Adam, in a duo with Fredrik Rasten, or in the Guédon-Levy-Dupleix trio) as well as in solo concerts. He also uses electronic instruments, synthesizers, and sine tone generators that underlines specific frequencies of acoustic instruments sound (resonnant trees, for ensemble) or can be treated as instruments (Rasten-Heilbron-Lane-Dupleix quartet).
He also offers compositions for ensembles in Europe and Japan, as well as for solo instruments (for the guitar and harpsichord) and electro-acoustic compositions.
After studying jazz piano at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, he moved to Japan in 2014, a decisive one-year experience where he connected with numerous Japanese improvisers and composers of the experimental scene(Taku Sugimoto, Toshi Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Minami Saeki, Ura Hiroyuki). Since 2016, he has been living in his hometown, Paris. He regularly works in France, Berlin, Europe, and Japan.
He keeps performing as well in the group vierge noir e, with
Anna Gaïotti and Sigolène Valax, a three headed musical chimera that explores extreme body and sound states, ranging from silence to excess, through a blend of electronic, acoustic, and concrete sounds. Occasionally, he composes music for film, notably for the films of director Rémi Allier (
Les petites mains, winner of the 2019 César for Best Short Film;
Zinneke).
