Simple

Album review

Over the years, French composer Sylvain Chauveau’s film score commissions have yielded some of his most exquisite work, yet tragically, these have been among the least widely available. This handy compilation assembles rare, out of print, and previously unreleased tracks from the soundtracks to Thomas de Thier’s Des Plumes dans la Tête, Sarah Bouyain’s Notre Etrangère, and H.R. Boe’s Beast and Alting Bliver Godt Igen. Only two tracks here are not from films: “Au Nombre des Choses” is from the score to a contemporary dance theater piece of the same title, and “Within the Orderly Life” is Chauveau’s remix of a track by American experimental IDM duo Pulseprogramming. Chauveau is a master of the post-classical style -- rooted in the classical idiom, yet never academic or clinical, it values melody and human emotions, particularly the melancholy, above all else. With the majority of the album’s tracks clocking in under the two-minute mark, perhaps the best word for these pieces is “vignettes”. Many of them seem nothing more than sketches, yet they tug at the heartstrings so fiercely that the listener wishes they were five times as long. There are essentially four types of pieces here: sparse solo piano of the sort which made Chauveau’s name on his breakout album Un Autre Décembre; ambient drone; chamber settings, and full orchestral arrangements. “Noir,” which kicks things off, and “Anthracite” are a brace of rumbling, dark ambient experiments quite different from everything else on the album and more comparable to the sound of Your Naked Ghost Comes Back at Night, the first album by On, Chauveau’s duo with Steven Hess. “Au Nombre des Choses” and “Blanche Comme l’Infini” -- which sounds like it has been mastered from vinyl -- are in a similar vein, but much lighter and airier, of a piece with the work of Taylor Deupree. “Notre Etrangère” is played on acoustic and electric guitar and has an almost folk-pop sound. The chamber pieces bear oft-repeated motifs, such as the plaintive cello strokes over tinkling arpeggiated piano figures on the likes of “Pour les Oiseaux.” The dense, forbidding harmonics of “The Plot” probably come the closest here to “pure” classical music. The tracks scored for a 40-piece string orchestra swell and billow, and are the most “maximalist” pieces Chauveau has ever written; the album’s two final tracks are particularly hauntingly beautiful and are professed by the man himself to be among his favorites. The shadow of seminal Louisville chamber rock ensemble Rachel’s looms long over this album, a debt Chauveau himself is more than happy to acknowledge, which of course is no bad thing. At the same time, the Frenchman expands upon this palette, happy to explore other genres and effortlessly incorporate them into his rich soundworld. This album makes a superb introduction for newcomers to the many facets of Chauveau’s work, but is equally indispensable to existing fans, as much of this music will be new to all but the absolute diehards.
© John D. Buchanan /TiVo