Dur Et Doux

Dur et Doux is a collective of musicians, a label and a production structure that praises the amplification and the unusual. Founded in 2008, it now gathers around 30 musicians based in and around Lyon and the Loire and Ain departments. Dur et Doux isn’t defined through a consistent aesthetic nor does it wave any stylistic banner. It defends a singular vision of amplified music, carried by thirty or so musicians from about fifteen bands which all care for details and the love of invention. They mix their knowledge of the history of music to their desire to fight it out, they transform academic techniques of composition into instant energy, and for the past ten years, they have been shaping the outlines of a thrilling adventure. A single band of the collective can play on the stages of international jazz festivals, clubs and modern music venues, off-circuit concert places run by alternative culture activists or cultural centers, while offering its music to audiences and places that usually don’t belong together. The musicians of the collective are the bulimic, jack-of-all-trades and blinder-free type. Far from marching to the beat of the same drum, they take on strong artistic individualities and personalities and make them cohabit at the best of their abilities. Their common hobby-horse is an indisputable thirst for innovation, the irresistible need to invent new sound territories while refraining from pretense creations or the demonstration of any tasteless formal research. They also show a certain love for the notion of durability at a time where artistic projects seem doomed to planned obsolescence, and also for the notion of group when individualism and solo careers are preferred elsewhere.