“In spite of being very experimental, Amarres Rompues always shows this inborn harmonious essence from Bertrand Loreau”
1 Le Vaisseau Fantôme Part I to IX 62:19
2 Le Bateau Ivre Part I to VII 58:21
(2 CD/CD-r/DDL 120:40) (V.F.)
(Experimental floating, melodic and rhythmic EM)
Hollow winds, melodious almost, shake some sonic twigs which sparkle in a somber ectoplasmic universe. It's in this way that the first part of Le Vaisseau Fantôme Part I lands between our ears. Afterward, the nine other parts spread some musical veils as much of abstract colors as the melodies can be evasive. AMARRES ROMPUES is to Bertrand Loreau what Beaubourg is to Vangelis; a somber album where the borders of the sound experiments are, on the other hand, embraced of a ghostly melodic approach. The tenebrous lamentations of the Yamaha DX-7 float like tears in weightlessness, unfolding oblong sighs with the reverberations tinted of an ochred plasma where the melodies invite themselves and of which the scarlet tints infuse an immense veil of sadness into a sonic setting which flirts between the cohesion and the abstraction, like Part III and its black contemplative melody which roams in an introspective cosmos. And it's not because it's a more experimental universe that Bertrand Loreau denies his melodic approaches. Not at all! Among all these winds, turbulences, eddies of synth pads and cosmic sound effects are hidden fragments of melodies which cry in the shadows of the dissonance. Like in the enveloping Part IV where they cry of their solitude, or still the very angelus Part VIII; two musical pieces with a strong apocalyptic scent à la Vangelis and the darkened but how much romantic Part VII. And if we want to relax from these psychosonic moods of Part VI or Part VIII, Part IX is tying up the broken mooring lines with a superb track where Bertrand Loreau shows to us that he masters to perfection the hypnotic and musical rhythms, as well as the harmonious envelopes which recover them of an attractive shroud of nostalgia. Simply brilliant!
Although clearly more musical, LE BATEAU IVRE staggers the same ambiospherical longitudes as Le Vaisseau Fantôme but with spasms of rhythms clearly more aggressive, as on Part I and its sequences which alternate the steps of the violence in accordance with metallic pads of some rather pugnacious synth lines. The ambiences are always torn between some rhythms as much impulsive than the dysfunction of a haywire robot while the melodies show their temperaments of grazed contrasts in a sonic arena populated of rebellion. There are also more musical tracks, more in fact than on Le Vaisseau Fantôme, even if always enriched in the complex of the reflections of an author who pushes the limits of its machine, and not the opposite, as on the disturbing Part II and the organic fury of Part III. And what to say about Part IV and its melody which dances on the hopping chords of sequences, just like in Part VII and finally the soft and very melancholic Part V? They are simply beautiful pieces of melody mislaid in a mist of experimentations.
In spite of its very experimental sonic environment, AMARRES ROMPUES proposes musical plays that will please as much to fans of abstracted EM as melodic, although the melodic portion asks a little of guts from the ears. But once tamed it, well assimilated it, we hear that AMARRES ROMPUES remains the musical signature of an author who, of the bottom of his sound experiments, will never succeed to hide his soft touch of melancholic harmonies.
Sylvain Lupari (January 13th, 2013) ***½**
Available at Patch Work Music