Oneiric ambient drone and polaroid pop from Kranky veteran, Benoît Pioulard, on a first full-length for Morr Music. The sound of Sylva is based on the beauty and shapes of nature: desert rock formations, verdant color, lush aqueous textures. Split into four movements, Solum (soil/solitude), Ignis (fire), Coeptum (seed) and Vireo (thrive) represent different environs in an impressionist embodiment of his visual aesthetic.
Oneiric ambient drone and polaroid pop from Kranky veteran, Benoît Pioulard, on a first full-length for Morr Music. The sound of Sylva is based on the beauty and shapes of nature: desert rock formations, verdant color, lush aqueous textures. Split into four movements, Solum (soil/solitude), Ignis (fire), Coeptum (seed) and Vireo (thrive) represent different environs in an impressionist embodiment of his visual aesthetic. Sound and vision merge in an affectionate organic study, bundled with pages of Polaroids from his environmental explorations; self-imposed constraints—no man-made objects, no redundant textures, a color palette as diverse as a vintage camera allowed—helped pare down 600+ images to 102 selected and arranged in diptychs with artist’s preface.
A 9-month hiatus from his day job facilitated daily recording sessions with trips to the US SW, Montana, Hawai’i and his native Michigan, while back home in Seattle, Thomas Meluch worked his recordings, adding two vocal tracks: “Keep” written round the tiny Draba flower (mentioned in A Sand County Almanac), about which ‘no one ever wrote a poem,’ for all the little plants he’d inadvertently crushed in his hiking life, “Meristem” dedicated to his brother, who died suddenly two years ago, featuring violin from London’s Freya Creech and “Raze II” wordless vox from NY singer, Caroline Shaw. Videos below show two beauteous shades of Pioulard—”Raze II”‘s grainy ambient drone and “Keep”‘s dayglo-fi pop.
Sylva is available on Morr Music November 15, 2019.
