Benjamin Quartz Sparks Passion and Poetry with “Pyromane”

Paris-based artist Benjamin Quartz is back with a gorgeous new single, “Pyromane,” that takes a gentle, wavering way between softness and fire. With this track, Quartz continues his lineage of combining world music textures and poetic lyricism, exciting the listener in a sumptuous landscape of rhythm, romance, and restrained energy. It is not merely a love song; “Pyromane” also meditates on the ambivalence of passion, remarkably, the warmth and full consumption of love itself.

“Pyromane” sets a stage for intimacy that is dreamlike and entrancing. String instruments softly plucked build feelings of vulnerability in their subtle resonance. As the piece slides along, the gentle samba-inspired rhythm begins to sway a portion, providing irony or attraction for dreamlike concepts of contemplation and desire. Brazilian percussion is combined with the strings from Europe astoundingly well, hypnotically romanticizing an emotional pacing and sense of texture; thus, Quartz applies an understanding of emotional pacing and texture in their decision-making. 

Benjamin Quartz speaks simply with a magnetic presence, his voice heavy with longing, yet tempered in sophistication. There is an understated drama in his delivery as if every lyric is a long breath from a wild heart. The song portrays a gypsy dancing around a freshly started fire, which represents the movement between attraction and destruction, and the birth and death. 

There is wonderful praise reserved here for the instrumentation of "Pyromane." The interplay of guitar, violin, and double bass stitches together a sensual, cinematic tapestry of sound. At the end of the piece, the audience will clap away rhythmically, with clacking castanets, adding a tactile, human component, yet paying homage to performance art and the primal celebration of being. In those last moments, the listener is transitioned to a twilight courtyard, in between Atlantic City, Paris, or Rio, the instincts of love still flickering. 

The fact that works it simply work "Pyromane" is special, interesting, and ineffable; nothing suggests chaos in the name. The beauty of "Pyromane" is its ineffable restraint; it burns quietly, without exploding, but always glowing. It is in this dynamic emotional tension that "Pyromane" becomes interesting. In this moment, Quartz has somehow created a song that feels both cosmic and personal, enraptured yet universal.

With his song “Pyromane,” Benjamin Quartz has done more than just create a song; he has created an experience. A sensuous and self-reflective experience based on sound and silence, heat and harmony, that honors and elevates the complications and complexities of love. Elegant, poetic, and deeply human, “Pyromane” cements Benjamin Quartz as one of Paris' most refreshing contemporary storytellers.