Perched alone on a stage, a character engages in a soliloquy
so as to unveil their innermost thoughts to the audience.
On this her first full-length effort, the analogue and
digital synthesizers, beat boxes, guitar and piano of
French chanteuse Judith Juillerat similarly become tangible
presences, shaking the room and divulging Juillerat's
concerns through cold, crisp tones, lockstep rhythms
and gray masses of quaking noise. Indeed, by not employing
computers in her works, Juillerat ensures that it is
her music one hears and not her software.
The rhythmic coordination of her more active pieces
have a syncopated subtlety and elegance rare in the
realms of dub and glitch. Simple beat boxes and austere,
static cracklings alternate between surprisingly inventive
rhythms or punching out jagged, off-kilter harmonies.
When pieces are more sedate and dreary, reverberating
gong-like sounds emanate a low ground swell of resonance,
which provides the sense that time is flexible and dramatic,
while metallic percussion rattles like rain on a tin
roof and a piano acutely dribbles around a few high-end
notes, sketching distant ghost melodies.
Juillerat squeezes impressive arrangements from her
narrow palette of sounds, fashioning compositions that
are pregnant with minute details and redolent with mystery.
During the latter half of the album, however, the repetition
of a number of themes introduces elements of electronic
bric-a-brac. While lodged in such moments, she over-relies
on shadowy, arctic drones and tones soft with peace-fuzz,
obscuring the vivid organic visuals which previous pieces
spawned. On album closer Le Jour Se Leve Dans Cinq
Immenses Secondes, against a backdrop of lapping
waves, Juillerat sketches a delicate, contemplative,
slightly forlorn piano vignette that reminds of Sylvain
Chauveau. The subtle, dignified gait of the arrangement
suggests some skill on the part of Juillerat, and the
pieces tranquil ebb and flow induces the listener to
wish the instrument had received more frequent attention.
Although lacking a certain depth, plodding through a
thick wall of drab distortion, all the while pelted
by nervous tones and wisps and whirls of processed synthesizers,
the soliloquy of this album stumbles now and again,
but finds its voice for a few brave, invigorating moments.
Max Schaefer
3.5/5 |
