When jazz drummer - and active participant in the american civil rights movement - Max Roach was drafted into the Duke Ellington Orchestra as a last minute substitute in 1944, he suddenly realised that he had to perform without any score or sheet music. In order to reassure him, Ellington, took him to one side and said « Keep one eye on me son, and one on the act ». The phrase is celebrated as having launched the career of a great musician. It is its symbolic nature which struck Thomas Balthazar and Grégoire Maus: to focus your attention on something precise, while also keeping a wider perspective; to pass from the specific to the general and back again, at the same time both observer and participant in a movement. An approach which can become the flexible backbone of a sonic pursuit which is never satisfied.
This dual role of observer and participant is one that Grégoire and Thomas learned in the sombre and hostile corridors of high school. An environment where getting by and building your identity demanded adaptation and imagination- holding your head high and pursuing music as a means of escape. They met each other aged 13, in first year. Each member of the class had to bring an object which was important to them. Among the stuffed toys, scarves, photos and other accessories of what were still young adolescent lives, they were the only ones to bring their favorite albums. They acknowledged each other across the classroom, and quickly became inseparable, dividing their time between crucial discussions about music and dreams in front of windows too narrow to quench their thirst for new discoveries, or to contain their ambitions.
