Free Space 2025

We designed a musical story following the chronology and the emotional evolution of the book.

The opening is a list where the word Espace (space) is flanked by other words, every combination evokes a different  feeling. In the bed & the room Perec reminds us that only one bed will ever be ‘our’ bed and asks the question – with some possible answers – when a room starts to feels like ‘your’ room. Moving in is a linguistic game, quick and bright, made of words that belong to the ritual of unpacking, placing, inhabiting. Walls is a game of perception: when you hang a painting, you forget there is a wall, on a wall one can write but we rarely do it… The street: crowded, restless — people, vehicles, animals passing each other in an unplanned dance. In a letter we hear about a man sitting in a café, wanting to begin a letter… and lingering in the moment before the first word. In the neighbourhood Perec reflects on when an area can truly be called by that name and it is a meditation on belonging like in “the bed & the room” — at what point can you call a place yours? In the city he speaks of his love for Paris, for wandering without purpose, for being both a local or a tourist. In the country – borders Perec notes that the same air drifts over both sides, but our bread changes. And people kill each other, often for only a strip of earth. The final track is called Universe: a space with no borders (perhaps). A vastness both inviting and unmeasured. And then, the return. One final address, precise and unmovable: the home of Perec’s childhood. The journey closes in the same way it began — from the infinite to the intimate.

Music, too, generally needs a ‘vacuum’ to move. It demands openness and, as such, is an invitation. Being in the world is a negotiation with space, a way of entering it and sharing it with others, a constant search for balance.