ATONE – un an

(CD, autres directions in music)

Once again I am wounded while writing a review for Atone. Last year – I checked the review to see what I got to work on – I had an open, bleeding blister on the inside of my right hand. This summer, exactly two years later, my right hand is in a cast because I cut the upper tendon of my right thumb. No, I am not at all superstitious. Do you think I should be? These things happen.

Resonance and a deeper understanding of sound have found their way into the compositions of Antoine Monzonis-Calvet from his debut “un jour” (one day) also on autres directions. Be it highpitched monotonous signals, distorted and enstranged from the human ear, or be it the amalgamation of customary sounds such as the accordion or a piano or even a voice, there is always an echo of something more profound, more sombre, more spiritual waiting around the corner or holding its hand above “un an” (one year). The title gives it away that more work and thought have been flooded into these recordings. Everything seems to evolve and change slower than in real life. A machine that expands time by sound, influencing the breathing rhythm of the listener by flowing and transcending layers of organs, samples and vibrations.

Lustre beats with an eerie, self-fulfilling atmosphere keep the tracks together. The main fascination and infliction of the tracks is in their stationary modus, which is to say that there are virtually no melodies as such, but what really counts is the current moment, the form of the frequency spectrum   which is being built in the here and now. Even if “Cordes” draws lines to some forms of IDM or breakbeat electronica, the overall humming of female vocal samples and the pitched cowbells in the back give away the more serious, almost classical approach of Monzonis-Calvet. For some reason the picture of a nightly piano played by an open French window to the sounds of Cicadas outside and the drapings moving in the wind Chopin-style come up more often than hints at the hectic, fast moving nightlife ecstasy of the urban clubscene chicque. As I said, serious music.

The single tracks don’t follow specific lines, even if they aren’t that hard to follow, but there are definitely surprises all around worth waiting for. “Resonance” sparkles and sprinkles like the fines works of Un caddie renversé dans l’herbe but moves in a sturdy bass beat at midlength which takes over the track and moves it into a soft bass-chamber versus noise experiment, as if separate parts of the frequency spectrum of the first part were taken and cut away, leaving nothing but the bass undertow and the high sounds crisping the top. There are monotonous, classical drones with layers of vibrating sounds akin to the pioneers of electronic music (“rupture”) which are counterparted with intricate, detailled current electronica percussions or experiments. The results are effects on a small scale as well as in grandezza, though as what to effect remains unclear througout.