Two years after releasing his first solo-piano album, JB Dunckel has reimagined its delicate melodies for string quintet. On Paranormal Music Chamber, the ten dreamy, moody tracks blossom into a warm palette of colours through minimalist yet sophisticated arrangements and production. The composer, a key figure in the French Touch movement with his duo group Air, ventures down a path trodden by Max Richter – but with his own innovative style.

JB Dunckel first created these pieces through a highly organic process of spontaneous composition at his piano for his 2024 album Paranormal Musicality. Now they take on a new dimension, perhaps one of the many unknown potentials they held from the very beginning. The initial burst of creativity – revealing a passion for impressionism, romanticism and minimalism –  now blends with a meticulous science of arrangement, resulting in a work of art painted with soft and welcoming contours.

First and foremost a “rêveur d’harmonies” (“dreamer of harmonies”), JB Dunckel has teamed up with composer and pianist Harry Allouche to create these arrangements for a string quintet specially formed by five musicians from the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris. Double bass, cello, violins and viola – sometimes joined by flute – significantly broaden the sonal spectrum of the pieces, while still preserving or even amplifying their original sensibility, freedom and momentum. JB Dunckel describes the melodies “like flowers” in how they have bloomed into new colours and fragrances.

Paranormal Music Chamber yields to an insistent desire for simplicity and minimalism, a quest for beauty that takes different paths depending on the composition: from the airy fluidity of “Shine” (and its pizzicati) to the enveloping melancholy of “Melo Walk” or “Dolphin”, from the liveliness of “Key Games” to the almost-dissonant unease of the aptly named “Désintégration”. The programme paints changing and contrasting landscapes, where the light falls differently in each one.

While simple and accessible, Paranormal Music Chamber is nonetheless an incredibly sophisticated album, the result of rigorous work at every stage of its conception: from the arrangements, incorporating very subtle percussion, to the mastering by Alex Gopher, who laid a “veil of comfort” over the recording. The production and mixing involved the use of machines (delays and compressors) and an ingenuity found in pop and contemporary music, as envisioned by Max Richter. These methods bring various lengths of reverberation into play, depending on the instruments or the way they are played. It is no easy feat achieving a work that is at once modern and complex, yet uncomplicated – a showcase of heartfelt and deeply human melancholy.