AKUSMI - Terra Incognita AKUSMI

Cartographers and US multinational technology corporations might think they’ve mapped out most of our big, beautiful blue planet, and yet there’s always more to discover if you know where to look. French-born, London-based composer and musician Pascal Bideau takes this as his central premise on a new album of intrepid sonic exploration that delights in the sensation of being somewhere you’ve never been before. ‘Terra Incognita’ invites us to seven faraway sonic imaginariums fusing global and spiritual jazz with life affirming minimalism into a hypnotic, polyrhythmic odyssey.

This time, the albums’ sound palette is more vibrant, earthy and abundant, drawing inspiration from the radiating optimism and high-energy sources heard in Afrobeat, Highlife and Electronic Afro-pop music, sounding looser, free and primarily interested in raw sensations. Antithetical to the precise ostinatos and gamelan patterns of the acclaimed debut ‘Fleeting Future’ (2022) and ‘Lines’ (2023). Terra Incognita, then, is a hybrid blend of traditional music and modern electronics, a trip into the unknown that ambulates freely, taking pleasure in its repetitions and never staying still. Bideau suggests this unmarked territory could be as much a fantasyland as it is a transportive journey into the inner self. 

Terra Incognita then is a rarified opportunity to get lost in and to find our presence of mind, to get off-grid, or even off the map altogether. “This album is a travel diary from an unexplored land: experiencing something never encountered before and the excitement that comes with it.”