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The third Songlines release by this international duo, active since 1996, features compositions by both performers, revisiting the expanded, enigmatic soundworld unique to the two of them. This time the vibe is often quite spare: as always, Houle's extended techniques on clarinet mesh intriguingly with Delbecq's prepared piano fabrics, and while they really dig in on several pieces, the music unfolds in a reverberant "inner" space that emphasizes its contemplative and crystalline qualities. By turns melancholy, fierce, effervescent and even humorous, its improvisations underpinned by an intuitive logic born of long friendship and shared musical understandings, Because She Hoped is avant-jazz/new music to be savoured. As François Houle puts it: "Duo playing is about the most intimate way to communicate with another musician. I have grown to have a deeper understanding of Benoît's language and sound world, which always provides me with clues as to how to execute ideas in different ways...How this plays out is that we don't try to formulate premeditated structures, or to ever adopt a traditional call and response, solo/accompaniment thing, except for the Ellington and Lacy pieces, which seemed to require a certain structural rigour. Our improvisations are much more akin to embroidery, painstakingly paying attention to the kind of fabric we want to create." Benoît Delbecq adds: "I find the musical flow very special on this recording, it is calm and somehow feverish all together....I think things move so fast inside when we play that it's complex to describe what's going on. I remember something Dave Holland told me: 'Playing needs to be unconscious and accurate while accurate listening has to be fully conscious.' I think this sentence totally applies to our duo. There is something highly conscious in the instant auto-analysis of the playing, and something definitely unconscious in the freedom we use."

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