NOISE ≤ breather almost a month after Parasite (The Boycott Manifesto) once again with the meditative, orchestrally graceful head cinema soundtrack Apology for Lost Time, Vol. 1to the excitement of their debut album The Machine is burning and now everyone knows it could happen again from the year 2021 in several waves.
Probably the best “new” (…) post-rock band of the last few years is relatively outside of their theoretically traditional genre sovereignty:
During the past year we had the chance to travel across Europe and expending our first album on stage. Night after night we tried to push the limits of our individual energies and our collective sound. We had witness sonic, emotional and physical intensity that we never imagined we would have. In this frenetic whirlwind it seemed essential to us to find moments to stop, meditate, and take a step back. These musical meditations take the form of an ambient EP in which we were able to freely explore the idea of creating a music refuge.
The whole was recorded in our studio „La Tanière“ and in the „Studio Capitole“ by mixing production techniques of all ages. In « La sagesse de nos aïeux », the composition have been made 100% on a paper as a tribute to the music of our ancestors, then it have been recorded and mixed on an old tape recorder. We then slowed down the tape to give this heavy and low sound that seems like fossilized. In « Rêveur lucide » we first recorded a guitar/bass improvisation on a 90’s cassette „portastudio“. This is the basis of the whole piece, which is then cut, processed and organized on software and then re-injected into synthesizers and other more contemporary treatments.
Finally, on „Les temps perdus“ we worked on scores for the synthesizers and the strings and in improvisation for the piano, the bass guitar and the drums. We created textures with an old Roland tape delay and at the end finalized the mastering on a beautiful Studer tape machine at Chab mastering with Adrien Pallot. This last piece is a form of synthesis of the experimentations of the first 2 pieces.
In fact, Theophile Antolinos (guitars / tapes), Clément Libes (violins / violas / keyboards / bass), Julien Aoufi (drums) and Luc Blanchot (cello) are with us Apology for Lost Time, Vol. 1 created a holistic little jewel that follows its round arc of suspense with a songwriting that patiently and nuanced carefully balances its basic dynamics and accents, declines the aesthetics with a multi-layered subtlety, and lets every element work well thought out down to the last detail, although the almost 25 act so instinctively grown minutes of the record.
In The wisdom of our ancestors the score spreads out symphonically and picturesquely in the ambient, the strings luxuriate in a romantic and sublime neo-classical grandeur, longingly comforting, until the avant-garde dystopia around speech samples shows gloomy ambitions.
lucid dreamer shimmers latently roaring and modified shifted, transfers its stellar, spherical elegy with electronic trip hop hatching into a spirit of optimism, whose drums drive organically, almost jazzy and the guitars dance, the amalgam transcends in booming beauty, as if it had 65daysofstatic an orchestral score for a Godspeed– Documentary written. The fact that the song falls short as a felt part of a superior suite that represents the self-contained complete work La sagesse de nos aïeux, because each of the fascinating parts should have been explored more extensively, basically only increases the addiction to listening again .
The lost times closes the circle as a cumulation and contemplative space dream that squeaks and sparkles, oscillates beguilingly endearingly, sets the framework with string arrangements in retrofuturistic musings, but blossoms majestically beyond the horizon – and finds its actual finale almost too abruptly, because everything could go on forever here without iconic scenes per se arising in the elegiac growth.
Strictly speaking, it’s all post-rock, of course, only marginally – or rather in the core – but that’s what makes the attraction of this band, which is appearing more and more like a forgotten classic of the genre’s wedding, so haunting and appealing. There is little to complain about in this respect – only the principle of Pelagic Secret preorder that comes with Apology for Lost Time, Vol. 1 celebrated its premiere, you don’t really have to be enthusiastic about it, even if the label per se only has more or less top-class artists in its stable.
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