When he took off in April 2021 for the International Space Station, astronaut Thomas Pesquet carried in his luggage a playlist concocted by FIP. These include Jamiroquai’s Space Cowboy and Gal MacDermot’s Walking In Space, but also Thomas de Pourquery’s Yes Yes Yes Yes and Supersonic, the title of the supergroup’s new album, Back To The Moon. Back to the Moon, therefore, for the saxophonist-singer who has been living with his head in the stars since his father told him, when he was still a child: “If you want to go to the Moon, aim for the most distant galaxy. »

  is infinite, when it comes to erudite but curious creators. Thomas de Pourquery & Supersonic Play Sun Ra (2014) then Sons Of Love (2017) marked the minds of the public and critics, and provided the fuel for lives where the sophistication of the compositions and the virtuosity of the soloists combined with the eccentricity and communion, in an atmosphere of pagan high mass. Never two without three, the epic could not stop there. Back to the moon, then.

As far back as he can remember, Thomas de Pourquery has always had a passion for astronomy, as much as he was intoxicated by travel – terrestrial or spiritual if not cosmic. Space and the great outdoors suck Back To The Moon with all the more breath as the pandemic nails us to the ground. But the genesis of the album precedes the crisis. He draws some of his inspiration from The Bride, a short film directed in 2018 by Vincent Paronnaud aka Winshluss (co-author of Persépolis with Marjane Satrapi) which stages Supersonic in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by zombies, on a Soundtrack signed by the group in fusion noise. It also integrates the collaboration initiated in 2018 with Congolese musicians, following concerts given in Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville.

Finally, the compositions are imbued with a love story concomitant with their lyrical exaltation. That was before a virus crashed into this enchanted trajectory. The lyrics, written during the first confinement, sometimes invoke light at the end of darkness, between surrealism and futurism – Pourquery cites Federico Fellini and René Barjavel as possible influences.