Shapes of the Fall

Close to two decades ago painter, poet and musical polymath, Piers Faccini, released his solo debut on Label Bleu. Since then he’s released Songs of Time Lost, a Top of the World album with cellist Vincent Segal in 2014, I Dreamed an Island in 2016 and recently turned up singing on Ballaké Sissoko’s new album Djourou(also reviewed this issue). Now comes his latest solo album, Shapes of the Fall, which is something rather special.

Based in France, but of British and Italian extraction, Faccini operates broadly in Tim Buckley/Nick Drake acoustic folk territory, singing in a honeyed voice over delicate finger-picking. But that only tells half the story – not least because Faccini’s instrument is, in fact, a fretless guitar-oud hybrid made by French luthier Michel Cassan. Its plangent sound is augmented by North African percussion, trance-like Gnawa and Berber grooves, folk rhythms drawn from around the Mediterranean and striking string arrangements by Spanish composer Lucas Suarez. The global melting-pot is realised at its best on the glorious ‘All Aboard’, on which Faccini is joined by the multi-faceted American troubadour Ben Harper and Moroccan Gnawa singer Abdelkebir Merchane.