François de Paule is the sole 21st century member of Église Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur (NYC chapter). This congregation of one convenes in the odd gallery café to perform the minimalist, hypnotic piano compositions of founder and phonometrician Erik Satie.
Emphasizing the surrealist and subversive nature of Satie's work, François uses non-traditional instrumentation such as 8-bit Casio, or Wurlitzer dripping in fuzzy delays set to DEFCON level: shoegaze. The intent is a recontextualization of Satie for modern audiences, who may have only encountered the Gymnopédies on a "Deep Focus Piano" playlist.
Listener - you aren’t taking coffee in La Nouvelle Athènes at the foot of 1890’s Montmartre. Henri Matisse does not sit to your right. Look and you will see it is a noise-canceling coder studying for an Amazon interview. But her headphones will drop. Such is the power of #realslimsatie.
2019:
2020: (A vexation)
2021: