“What kind of society would we build if we were given a blank page? It is the question to which Mirek Coutigny offers a dazzling musical answer with the album Through Empty Landscapes and New Beginnings. Inspired by Emily St John Mandel’s book Station Eleven and the world around us during the lockdown in 2020, Mirek Coutigny started writing new music. Our current society is characterised by fragmentation and polarisation, the apocalypse is just around the corner and fear rules the world. Coutigny responds musically against that dystopia with a story of connection and resilience in which he contrasts hope as a positive force with fear. He sought that connection himself with his band members, with whom he spent months together in the studio, even more than on his previous records, honing both songs and sound.

Jolien Deley, Jonathan Bonny and Klaas Tomme are musicians who have been part of Mirek Coutigny’s live band for more than 10 years, so they intuitively sensed perfectly the bigger story Mirek was looking for. Through Empty Landscapes and New Beginnings thus became a true group record that literally screams to connect with the listener through a grander and more electronic sound with room for drums, guitars and even voice. Coutigny breaks out of himself, shifting the focus from his world, the piano, to the group, bringing a record that goes beyond his previous work. Bolstered by his group, Coutigny comes off more con dent than ever.” (Icarus Records/Consouling Sounds)

“Theodore Wild Ride celebrates musical freedom and redefines the relationship between space and time with a special, unexpected orchestration. [...] The album unfolds like a magical film, which can be set in the vast American landscapes of bygone days as well as in post-apocalyptic future. [...] A record like a solo expedition, a journey that the listener experiences accompanied by this trio of unusual chamber music, sometimes nostalgic, sometimes dark and vulnerable, but always questioning our place facing natural forces, the wild world, and the cruelty of ourselves.” (Icarus Records / Consouling Sounds)