Eight interlocking tracks of floating atmospheres and blends of colorful clouds, recorded at La Berceuse (Brooklyn, NY) and Offthesky studio, Denver CO in 2022-23 with electric and acoustic guitar, voice, microcassette tape, field recordings, modular synth, strings and flute.
The feeling of never forming while always floating
Eight interlocking tracks of floating atmospheres and blends of colorful clouds, recorded at La Berceuse (Brooklyn, NY) and Offthesky studio, Denver CO in 2022-23 with electric and acoustic guitar, voice, microcassette tape, field recordings, modular synth, strings and flute. Julie Slater is heard on various string recordings and Shilpi Gupta plays flute on “Guilt and Beauty.”
A hand numbered Limited edition of 200 copies was released on January 22, 2024, sealed like an old book. The Compact Disc (CD) was hand-numbered with a white cardboard 300 gm Digisleeve, and a thick paper card plus 2 stickers. There is also a digital version that will likely be available long after the limited edition has been sold out.
The opening track is “Fed On Lilies” (5:08) and brings a sense of floating, blending suspended tones and distant whistles, an atmosphere that floats and lingers, like a bed of aromatics. The journey proceeds through the fog and mists that are unforgettable. The feeling of never forming while always floating and somehow becoming a more polyphonic drone, “Memorize” (4:33) extends with a dry choir of wind synthesis, turning and shaping invisible locations, guided by Simonides of Ceos.
“Saint Praxedis” (5:50) died in the year 165, when she was 16 years old. It was said that she provided for the poor and gave care and comfort to persecuted Christians and martyrs. Her feast day is July 21. The sound is ambiguous and spectral, always formless and floating like little clouds or like fog. The spirit calls from within. And then friend Boddah calls, foggy elements in motion whisper, the music floats away with no clarity. “Seaside Nude / Suicide Note” (4:51), begs the question, did the seaside nude leave the note? Perhaps the note was found by the seaside and nothing else. There is always another way to die, stray bullets go anywhere, usually unexpectedly, and unintentionally. “Stray Bullet” (5:45) has a sound that might be fatal and reflective. I hear no borders that are visible within the cloud, always quiet and formless floating about.
Hyacinths are often associated with spring and rebirth, here there might be curling circles and repeating dry whispers, with a very slow fade in, sounding like something went wrong and the sound has almost stopped. The “Hyacinth Girl” (4:49) emerged once previously from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:
“Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”
What would an image of a crisp whisper look like? Here it has a gentle flowing glow, “Whisper Down the Lane” (4:32) and always keeps with the ambient modality, empty echoes imply huge reflective spaces surrounded by hidden ordinary neighborhoods. How do we end this floating atmospheric journey? With “Guilt and Beauty” (4:56) which forms wispy layers from slow tones like clouds. I think I hear some extra noises and glitchy moments, lightly applied and barely sprinkled in the mix. There is eventually a clear flute with strings within, this is Shilpi Gupta on flute. Never failing, always slow, always formless, leaving the constant listener within a place of calm and loaded with secret rainbows.
Benoît Pioulard is the primary audiovisual project of Michigan-born, Brooklyn-based Thomas Meluch. With six LPs on the renowned Kranky imprint, as well as a catalog of works for Universal (UK), Morr Music (DE) and others, he has constructed a unique aesthetic steeped in the textures of analog decay and pop song structure using chiefly guitar, piano and tape processing. He has also built an extensive archive of Polaroid photographs (many of which grace his album covers), the first official collection of which is the hardcover book “Sylva”, released in 2019. His most recent album Eidetic (Morr, 2023) was his first vocal-heavy work in several years, and will be followed in 2024 by the third LP from his Orcas project with Rafael Anton Irisarri (Dais, Room40).
Jason Corder is an experimental-ambient multimedia artist based in Denver, CO. He has been producing music, video art, audio software, and the occasional interactive sound sculpture, for over 20 years. He teaches private courses on generative music and occasionally lectures on various sound design topics at Denver University. He currently is the Audio Director at the Denver based videogame studio Dire Wolf. Over the years, he has worked with labels such as Home Normal, 12k’s term, Facture, IIKKI and more. Over the years he has performed at Mutek, Decibel, Communikey and other festivals, sharing the bill with like-minded artists Pole, Matmos, William Basinski, and more.
Sunder is available on laaps. [Bandcamp]
