I'm really happy to present you Mammal Hands' new album: Gift from the Trees. Go listen to it on all your favorite platforms: https://gondwana.lnk.to/GiftfromtheTrees
With Mammal Hands, i's a musical love story that started in 2017.
I was going to my sister's home for dinner. I was listening to FIP radio in the car.
We arrive in front of her house but a song catches my attention. I leave the radio on.
I open Shazam.
This track is Quiet Fire by Mammal Hands. It is the musical love at first sight.
And then I say to myself, "Wow, I absolutely have to work with them!"
Luck, or the absence of Covid at the time, smiled on me: the English band came to play at the Duc des Lombards a few weeks later.
I contact Jordan on Facebook to offer him to test some mouthpieces. He answers me quickly and tells me that he is interested, great!
So we meet in the Duc's dressing room on April 7, 2017 and we try mouthpieces. The concert the same evening transports me.
The mouthpiece is a very personal object, it is the link between the musician and his instrument, it is the mouthpiece that will allow the musician to obtain, more or less easily, the sound that he seeks.
For Jordan, who had been playing with his mouthpieces for many years, and who was curious about what we were doing at Syos, but who didn't necessarily want to change, the process took time.
Indeed, in order for him to decide to change, this new Syos mouthpiece really had to bring him something more: ease, a warmer sound, a better access to high notes.
And then when you tour a lot, you don't necessarily have time to practice and it's not necessarily the ideal moment to change your set up.
I saw him several times. At the Défense Jazz Festival, at Jazz à la Villette. Each time I brought him new mouthpieces, improved according to his feedback.
And then the Covid came. No more concerts. But more time to practice, to experiment. Our meetings during the soundchecks were replaced by mail exchanges, but it was a period where we really moved forward.
Last year I was so happy, after 5 years of perseverance, and in front of a packed audience at le Café de la Danse to see Jordan playing with his Syos mouthpieces on tenor and bass clarinet.
Today I'm really proud to share with you this wonderful new album and I hope you will like it as much as I do :)
Pauline
