Silencio: Gone EP
Three:four Records / Eglantine Records

A twenty-five-minute follow-up to the early 2012 full-length When I'm Gone, Gone features the title track along with two remixes by Bruno Fleutelot and Ken Camden plus two exclusive pieces laid down during the When I'm Gone sessions. Recorded between 2008 and 2011, the material was performed by project founder Julien Demoulin (guitar, field recordings, bass, synth, electronics), Nicolas Lecocq (keyboard, synth), and Bernold Delgoda (bass, synth, electronics), though Demoulin and Delgoda are currently the electroacoustic outfit's sole members.

“Gone” emerges from fog to have electric piano and thick ambient textures establish a soothing electronica moodscape. The intensity subtly increases as guitar figures and scratchy beats add to the sparkling and ever-thickening mass. Bruno Fleutelot and Ken Camden each contribute a remix of the piece, with Fleutelot's initially accentuating the tune's chiming guitar parts and softer side before threading into its arrangement a slightly funky drum pulse, and Camden's an equally sparkling if slightly more serene take on the Silencio original. A considerably more disturbing atmospheric design characterizes “Redwood Fog,” which plays like some clangorous space-drone exercise in metallic resonance and reverberation. Primarily an abstract excursion, trilling piano washes eventually surface amidst the waves to establish some connection to acoustic music-making. The EP's longest setting at seven minutes, “Only Now” weaves delicate guitar and bass shadings and outdoors field recordings into a ponderous meditation nudged along by a plodding beat pulse, piano accents, and dream-like shimmer. A generally beguiling snapshot of Silencio's sound, Gone might be described as melodious ambient moodscaping at its most artfully rendered.

January 2013