Search - Piers Faccini, Vincent Segal :: Songs of Time Lost

First collaboration between the two
Follow-up to Piers' 2013 critically acclaimed Between Dogs and Wolves
The due have been playing together since the late 1980's but this is their first official release

Piers Faccini and Vincent Segal met in Paris in the late 1980s and have been friends ever since. Songs of Time Lost is their first joint album. Using voice, guitar and cello - and in a variety of languages from English to Neapolitan dialect and Creole - the album brings together original compositions, traditional songs and some covers. 'It feels like a reunion,' says Vincent Segal, 'even though we never really lost touch over the years.'
At the time of their original meeting, Piers Faccini was a painter and student at the Paris Beaux-Arts. Vincent had just left the Conservatoire. He was immediately taken by Piers vocals: I wanted to find ways to support his voice, to envelop his words. Piers later went on to launch his first solo album in 2004, Leave No Trace, which was produced by Vincent Segal himself. Piers work as a solo artist began. Meanwhile Vincent started to develop Bumcello and a myriad of other projects. The two musicians constantly kept in touch and would meet to play together when Piers was passing through Paris or Vincent was performing in London.
'I still like hooking up with Piers in the same way as when we first met,' Vincent says, 'like when we used to play in my tiny apartment in Paris or right on the street. We always had to invent something there and then. We knew what was required. Our repertoire was limited, but it was different and unusual, anything from Muddy Waters, to Fela Kuti and Kodály. Songs of Time Lost is like a direct echo of those early days playing together on street corners in Paris, at the entrance of underground stations.'
Why did the two musicians wait twenty-five years? Piers and Vincent are great believers in things taking the time they need. And it takes time to make sense of the world s music, to refine performance, to absorb the complexity of songs. This all the more evident in this album as the duo are revisiting the very songs which originally brought them together. 'Reprising music and songs that we love,' Piers Faccini explains, 'is a way for us to see how we can do them justice, with honesty and precision. You have to adapt to them, mould them to yourself, like an item of clothing or a shoe. And for that you need time, a lot of time. If you try and run too fast then you re probably going to fall flat.'