ant'lrd & Benoît Pioulard: Deck Amber
Sounds et al

Naturally, the first thing you notice about this excellent, hour-long collaboration between ant'lrd (Colin Blanton) and Benoît Pioulard (Thomas Meluch) is the striking mode of presentation: a double-cassette release, its two components are snugly housed within a butterfly case, itself adorned with photographic artwork by Meluch. The reason for the split's a good one: in featuring seven pieces the two created together, one cassette represents the formal collaboration; the second features two ten-minute tracks, solo pieces by each participant. It's a smart way of presenting the materials and an attractive one to boot.

The project's seed was planted when Meluch received from Blanton a copy of his 2015 Sunnup release and was sufficiently captivated by it. Discussions ensued about a possible collaboration, leading to file exchanges between Blanton, now a Portland resident, and his Seattle-based partner. The process formally began when the former sent Meluch a thirty-minute loop, which he then transformed by adding guitar and other treatments, and the project progressed thenceforth in similar, easygoing manner until it felt ready to be mastered by Meluch's Orcas partner Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio.

Each artist has a different take on the result: for Meluch, “it's all about wintry nostalgia with some shadows in the periphery”; for Blanton, Deck Amber's “a contemplative slab of ambience that's in no rush to get anywhere fast.” However it's described, it's beautiful stuff, a wonderful example of evocative, detail-rich ambient soundscaping. In “Corvid,” the first of the seven pieces the two jointly created, tones whistle softly as they drift across a hazy, opaque mass, their flute-like murmur occasionally accented by mellotron-like surges and smeared by an expanding cloud of static. There's a strong granular quality to the sound design, which sounds in places like the kind of noise a needle might make if its gouging of the vinyl surface were amplified ten times over; it also exudes an industrial and decaying character whose swirl likens it to a beats-free Gas production and feels wholly in keeping with the warbly playback often associated with the cassette medium.

Five variations on the theme follow, each one ultra-thick in density and rich in dizzying layers of detail, with found sounds and field recordings some of the source materials used for the deep dives. Side B's “Docene” stokes a roaring fire from its first moment, its pitch calibrated carefully to a controlled roar for seven minutes, whereas the fleeting “Ciety” distances itself from the others by working the speaking voice of Meluch's grandfather-in-law Dennis Dumont into its churn. In all seven cases, the stimulation level is high, the collaborators intent on engaging the ears with energized material packed with detail.

May 2018