{"id":10032,"date":"2018-01-26T10:54:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T09:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=10032"},"modified":"2018-01-26T10:54:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T09:54:55","slug":"mathias-delplanques-temoins-reviewed-by-aural-aggravation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=10032","title":{"rendered":"Mathias Delplanque\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153T\u00c3\u00a9moins\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reviewed by Aural Aggravation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nMark E Smith has died. It shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come as a surprise. In fact, the surprise should be that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t die sooner. But I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but be shaken by the news. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel appropriate to post any music reviews: my social media streams are aclog with tributes to Smith, and it feels wrong even to add to the noise. Part of me feels I should revisit a slew of the old favourites, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so engrained in my mind, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really need to hear them, especially not now.<\/p>\n

And so I immerse myself in T\u00c3\u00a9moins, the latest offering from Mathias Delplanque, whose work I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve previously enjoyed. The three sections of T\u00c3\u00a9moins (including the digital bonus track \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTU)\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 are a world away from the ramshackle three-chord stomps and lyrical derangements of The Fall: these instrumental works \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sound collages laid over difficult hums and drones \u00e2\u20ac\u201c present a very different kind of abstraction. And it reminds me, vitally, that life goes on. Music goes on.<\/p>\n

The sparse arrangements \u00e2\u20ac\u201c often, they barely feel like arrangements \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are as much about space and silence as sound. The sounds \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the whirrs, the drones, he hums, the hisses \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are interrupted, disrupted, broken \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by seemingly random elements. Birdsong, lowing cattle, slamming doors, clatters and bangs, thumps and crackles. These are amidst the irregular extranea which form the fabric of the material of T\u00c3\u00a9moins.<\/p>\n

The atmosphere shifts and moods emerge most unexpectedly from seemingly innocuous sound pairings and juxtapositions. Late in the second piece, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBruz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, thin, tentative notes hover long in the air, needling the senses while unexpected bumps and knocks at close proximity are enough to make you jump. Muffled conversation carries on all around. Here, Delplanque expertly recreates the conditions and sensations of the anxiety of agoraphobia. It grows chill, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to not feel tense are wary. On \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by far the shortest piece running for less than ten minutes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a ghostly piano drifts into the damp air while scraping footfalls combine to create an unsettling, spine-tingling atmosphere.<\/p>\n

With T\u00c3\u00a9moins, Mathias Delplanque delivers an hour of understated yet quietly compelling ambient dissonance. Christopher Nosnibor<\/em><\/p>\n

via Aural Aggravation<\/a><\/p>\n