GALERIE STRATIQUE - Nothing Down-To-Earth

Emerging from Quebec City, in the French speaking part of Canada, Charles-Emile Beullac was first noticed on Worm Interface’s Alt. Frequencies 4 compilation, where he shared listening time with Mira Calix, Jake Mandell, Freeform and Plod, contributing with the beautiful Vu. Beullac spent most of his early teens learning about electronic music on a cheap keyboard/sequencer, while listening to almost anything from Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene to Public Enemy, the Pixies, Autechre and classical music. With such a wide range of influences, it is rather surprising that his first album, Nothing Down-To-Earth, is so consistent and focused.
Using mostly analog sounds and effects, without a sample in sight, Beullac builds short effective melancholic vignettes (the longest track clocking at just over five and a half minutes) on which he drapes luscious melodies and complex structures. If the connection with Boards Of Canada is tempting, it is also too easy and undermining a comparison to fully appreciate the imaginative soundscapes served here. Perhaps more accurate would be to associate Beullac with Biosphere as the man confesses finding inspiration in the icy atmosphere of the long Canadian winters. If his music is equally as reflective and his sonic configurations are equally as rich and dense as Geir Jenssen’s, Beullac presents an altogether more accessible journey through composite music. Playing on the dichotomy between light-minded melodies and dark arrangements, he in turn creates magnificent pieces of innocence (Algeria, Soleil Levant) or perversion (Léviathan, Bathyscaphe). Nostalgic in the way trains journeys are, Nothing Down-To-Earth seems hermetic to any interaction with the outside world, retreating instead in the closeted comfort of Beullac’s imaginary world. Each track is strongly individual, yet very consistent in form and shape with the next, contributing in this album being extremely coherent. Although there is no weak moment here, the strongest elements of this record are to be found on the spooky Léviathan and Bathyscaphe and the more light-minded Rylka and Dictaphone.
With this first effort, Charles-Emile Beullac is proving to withstand the comparison with some of the more established names around the world. His intimate music proves full of magic or mischief, and deserves to make its way to any decent record collection.