The drawings from the series Paysages accidentés by artist Chloé Poizat were the starting point for Julien Beau and Mokuhen’s sound project.
Since 2015, their work unfolds around sound fiction, collage, assemblage, without boundaries of styles. The form is free and without predefined rules. Constantly reactivated dialogue, each drawing by Chloé Poizat then becomes the source of a new correspondence between the two musicians. In the form of fragmented narratives, we discover these soundscapes. Nothing is imprinted there, nothing is affirmed, nature is swept away by fever, by hordes of imperceptible people, by strange shapes, enigmatic animals.
In this fragile balance, we listen and we lose ourselves in this musique-paysage, on a journey far beyond the Blackwater River.
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Instability rarely sounds this elegant. Julien Beau makes the uncertain beautiful. Logic refuses to impose itself. Rather the sounds take on an emotional dimension. Scrapes with near-melodies occur on a fairly regular basis. Pieces of AMM, Oval, and modern classical come together to create these relatively dark soundscapes. No order exists at all. Attempting to decipher the strange code is hopeless. What is certain is a relentless push for experimentation. Many times the focus on the violins, piano, or horns helps to mold the digital debris into something quite compelling, orchestral even. ‘Memento’ introduces the album’s odd nature. For most of the song’s duration it focuses on blurred lines rather than anything tangible. The violins are particularly tortured on this piece as the violins appear willing to impose some order. On ‘Reflet part 1’ the merging of the classical and digital is much clearer. Little environmental touches confirm that this is a dark piece. By the end the horns take over the piece with vaguely calming reverberations. ‘Reflet part 2’ expresses a similar emotion with more electronic effects, static and random digital skips. Around the end the digital rules with the album coming close to a Raster Noton release. Humor appears on ‘Atom’ perhaps the most light-hearted piece on all of ‘Reflet’. The loopy progression gives off a feeling of true loopiness. ‘Lude RMX’ finishes it off with a return to the more approachable methods of the beginning. ‘Reflet’ feels akin to a cycle, circling around trying to discover new ecosystems.
