AU PHIL DE NAOS

"Au Phil de Naos - Hommage à un lutin Chantant" is a tribute to Philippe Mottée, singer of the french neo progressive band Naos. Phil had hoped for years that Naos would reform to release a third album of which a few tracks had been worked, but nothing was further than the demo level. Phil died in the middle of January 2022, and a few days later Dominique Marrion (from the group Raison de Plus) told me that Phil had sent him seven demo tracks from Naos, hoping that Raison de Plus could record them. With Eric Bonafoux, the last keyboardist of Naos, we decided to call on many musician friends to record these titles while respecting the models. This is how we find on this album all or part of the musicians from the French groups Raison de Plus, Controverse, Magnesis and JPL, and also musicians such as Pat Sanders (English band Drifting Sun), Jean-Philippe Suzan (Gens de la Lune), Dominique le Guennec (Mona Lisa), Achraf Elasraoui (Moroccan singer), Yon Gachet Chevalier and Thierry Bernier. We can hear Phil's singing accompanied by Lucien Pagano (guitarist of Naos) and his wife Marie as backing vocalists in the last track of the album. "Voyage" was taken from a low quality live recording, it was an acoustic track on which Phil sang over a few chords of Lucien's guitar. To have better quality and bring out Phil's voice, Didier Leveau digitally isolated the vocals, re-recorded an acoustic guitar track and added light keyboard layers. All the musicians agreed to work for free, as well as the talented Scottish painter Charlie Roy who created the visual for the album based on a screenshot taken from a video of Naos on stage.