CD – f4 Music
On first listening it is not easy to recognize the genealogy of this duo, whose origins are grounded in the rave and techno scenes of the nineties, in dj culture, and in a fascination with synthetic sounds and sci-fi movie settings. Jean-Yves Leloup and Eric Pajot, aka Radiomentale, maintain the evocative flavour of those years, hypnotically aesthetic and soaked with declarative vocals. In this work, however, we encounter a totally new approach, packed full of field recordings and drones, acoustic sounds and digital weaves. The audio captures include recordings made in both natural and urban environments, giving life to very ethereal textures. The first of the three substantial tracks of this project was inspired by “Carré Blanc”, a dystopian film by the Canadian director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti, an author familiar with futuristic contexts filled with dark and pervasive atmospheres. “Sinking”, a more dilated but nicely textured score, features insistent, well-balanced and modulated iterations, presenting electronic manipulations and sound passages with sensitive interlacing and rarefied strings. The album closes with “Gotlander”, a solo work by Eric Pajot, whose recordings were captured during a journey through the homonymous Swedish island during the shoot of a movie called Are you there by Grégory Abou. This composition is also very ambient and filled with various quotes, in the wake of the Tarkovskij and Bergman desert and freezing imagination. It is evocative of mysterious lands and features an abstract narration, playing with various references and suggestions.