CD – Baskaru

Based on the homonymous story by Gustave Flaubert, Un Cœur Simple by Stephan Mathieu is characterized by quietist, dilated and dreamy evolutions. Mirroring Flauber’s textual aesthetic, these elements remain faithful to a dark and fervent narration, soaked in desolate and immanent surroundings. Italo Calvino declared that Un Cœur Simple is made of “visible things” and of “the essentiality of writing, the simplicity of things and words, the miraculous sublime d’en bas the writer was able to achieve”. In the abstract evolutions of the German experimenter and sound-artist, a feeling of absence gratifyingly co-exists with a great richness of detail and a subtle and non-schematic lyricism. Stephan Mathieu has created a meticulous work: here you can find unresolved passages and atmospheres treading a precarious line between illusion and mystery, where nothing seems to exist on its own and time and space have lost the capacity of making reciprocal interdependent relationships. However, the refined and austere compositions are not a sequential rewriting or a new sonic representation of the story. Between the cuts we encounter a simple tune played on a harp and some organic field recordings, as well as fragments of chamber music (in “Devenir Sounds”), distorted vibrations and glitchy winces. On the whole, the work is very charming and employs cutting-edge tools and methods in a fondness remembrance of something past. Aurelio Cianciotta

Stephan Mathieu – Félicité