Following the release of 2020’s Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot) and the collaborative album with Mathieu Gabry as Snowdrops, French composer and multi-instrumentalist Christine Ott has announced the release of a new album. Time To Die will be out tomorrow via Gizeh Records. According to the press release, it is a musical fresco in 8 chapters, a sensory journey between the world of the living and the dead, between contemporary classical and electro-acoustic music. 

The expressive and spontaneous impetus, leitmotif in her musical production, takes a new form within Time to Die. Through the notes disseminated in an endlessly reinvented minimalist heritage, the interpretation is the ultimate musical glue allowing the pieces to come to life, thereby making this repertoire and its composer-performer unique. A universe where music – despite the album’s title – never dies.

She explains: “« Rather than an evocation of death as we could imagine, the album “Time To Die” is to me more a reflection and a questioning about humanity, and a story of humility in front of the mysteries of death and its thousand facets. “Time To Die” is closely linked to the album “Only Silence Remains” also released by Gizeh records in 2016. The album ends with the track “Disaster” accompanied by a poetic text I wrote and interpreted by my friend Casey Brown. The essential idea was to share a tribute for the conscience of our universe given over to the cruelty, violence and irresponsibility of man in front of nature, and an invitation to remain awake and vigilant in front of the outside world. And, the final note was a note of love and hope…

At the time of the composition of these two albums, I had in mind very strong images of several science-fiction films, which moved me enormously and which suggested many thoughts to me. These movies always accompany me ; they are all adaptations of novels, intimately linked and carried by inventive literary stories which reveal parallel worlds to us, always with a character who takes the role of a “mediator”. I am of course first of all thinking of “Blade Runner”, but also of “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang who influenced Ridley Scott with its urban settings, its immense towers, and the opposition of social classes within this dystopian megalopolis! But i’m also thinking about “Soylent Green” by Richard Fleisher… And in another way, of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy…

It seemed obvious to me to start again from Rutger Hauer’s monologue “Tears in Rain”, whose ending is improvised by the actor himself, a powerful and moving ending! With the last words of Rutger Hauer, the important thing is to understand that it is not only a question of dying, but of no longer having access to the Immortality which had been promised to him by his “creator”. Roy understands everything and it is a liberation for him. Like any human, he understands that learning to live is also learning to die. Life is unique and you have to live it fully because we are only passing birds… And it evokes those moments of ephemeral beauty…

I entrusted the end of this monologue to my friend Casey Brown, who interpreted it beautifully, in a very personal way from his home in Los Angeles. His voice is enveloped by a whirlwind of synthesizers, Jupiter 8 and several tracks from Ondes Martenot mixed with rain and thunderstorm… All this is very cinematographic I believe, and there are in these two albums (of a future triptych) multiple tributes to these essential films, but also to this incredible actor and very engaged man, Rutger Hauer who left us the year before, when I was working on the album.

The album “Time To Die” reveals a kaleidoscope of sensations and colors, a path strewn with reflections on the double, the reflection of ourselves, sometimes imbued with symbolism, like the rain, it could be the evocation of the flood or simple degradation of the Earth by humans ? In “Time to Die”, I wanted to express the imminence of death, revealed by the inevitable motif of the timpani. And it moves towards the melancholy and loneliness of “Brumes”, the clarity of “Miroirs”, the appeasement and calm of “Landscape”… I have written the album as a journey; we are carried away by the waves of an ocean of feelings, immersed in heavy and oppressive atmospheres, resurgences of beautiful moments of life, and also in an atmosphere of light and deliverance!

The album opens with “Time To Die” and ends with “Pluie”, two very orchestrated tracks which surround other more minimalist and refined musical pieces such as “Miroirs”, totally improvised like “Chasing Harp”, or even very composed like ” Comma Opening “… Over the soundscapes, I wanted to let the emotions free and appeal to the individual prism of each. Perhaps each piece, each emotion on the record could refer to a color – it is perhaps a secret link that I have with the world of musical colors of Ginette and Maurice Martenot. As children, they liked to associate a note to a color. Maybe also an unconscious connection to the universe of Olivier Messiaen where the tones are associated with a world of colors… “Miroirs” shimmers with bursts of light and plunges us into a yellow halo, “Time To Die” reveals its powerful black lines which appear in the translucent blue… And i found these colors and this transparency in the engraving by Renaud Allirand which illustrates the album.”

Check the full streaming below.