FLÂNEUR DAGUERRE PROFILE/BIO:

"Like an ethereal dream, Flâneur Daguerre has a cool elegance and mysterious charm that pulls you into the story of each song." 

      -Alyson Schill, Roxy Entertainment

Still young in Taipei, Flâneur Daguerre makes its music according to a unique blend of aesthetic styles + compositional processes. Formed in June 2009 and playing their first gigs at Sappho de Base in XinYi, the group brings to together some of the island's finest improvisers from diverse musical backgrounds, both foreign and Taiwanese. 

Flâneur Daguerre was founded on the belief that modern music, especially that which is so-called "avant-garde," can be enjoyed and accessed by the same audiences that find comfort in today's mainstream pop. The band explores free jazz, Eastern European and Balkan music, but they often subject pop and rock + roll forms to the improvising methods of jazz and Indian musicians. 

“FLÂNEUR DAGUERRE” ?

flâneur = a stroller, a wanderer, whom the poet Charles Baudelaire calls "a person who walks the city in order to experience it." The philosopher Walter Benjamin called the flâneur "a person who observes culture but does not experience it." We in flâneur daguerre as artists often identify with this role as a wanderer, and as observers of culture.

Daguerre = the surname of Louis Daguerre, the man who invented the earliest form of photography, the "daguerrotype." Walter Benjamin wrote about daguerrotypes and their ability to capture the essence of something's time and place.

Our name combines these two ideas of Benjamin's and we choose our music according to the ideas of capturing each song's "essence of time and place" in which it was created.

...I hope this helps! It is a bit of a long explanation, but it's kind of cool :)

                                                                                                                                Louis Goldford