2015: for the people of France, a year seared into memory with a red-hot iron. It began with the Charlie Hebdo killing and culminated in the Bataclan attack. Morituri (“those who are about to die”) is a work impregnated with this fateful zeitgeist. Murat evokes a world that has lost its bearings, above which hangs the reaper’s shadow, even going so far as to narrate his own suicide attempt on “Le Cafard”, the black jewel that concludes the album. Subtle, jazzy arrangements provide the perfect backdrop for his elevated wordsmithing.
