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Benoit Pioulard

The Benoit Pioulard Listening Matter

The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter is the sixth kranky album from Thomas Meluch under the nom de plume Benoît Pioulard. It arrives on the 10th anniversary of his first LP Précis, and offers a rekindled focus on self-examination, as well as a return to vocal-based pop structures following the mostly instrumental Sonnet (2015).

Recording for the Listening Matter began during a period of grief, turmoil and self-medication, and continued throughout two years of growth and healing. Reflections on vice (“Layette”, “Anchor as the muse”), virtue (“Narcologue”) and death (“A mantle for Charon”) feature equally in this concise treatise aimed at the flawed-but-resilient core in us all.

By coincidence this album was completed on the very day Meluch’s only brother died; accordingly, it’s dedicated to him and anyone seeking paths away from their demons.


TRACK LISTING

1. Initials B.P.
2. Narcologue
3. Anchor As The Muse
4. A World Of What-There-Is
5. Layette
6. I Walked Into The Blackness And Built A Fire
7. Like There’s Nothing Under You
8. Perennial Comforts
9. Defect
10. A Mantle For Charon
11. In-The-Vapor
12. The Sun Is Going To Explode But Whatever It’s OK
13. Ruth

Benoit Pioulard

Sonnet

    The sound of the ?fth Benoit Pioulard full length is lush and verdant, a temperate rain forest of ear ecstasy that re?ects the environment surrounding the artist. A mostly instrumental work, it is an adept melding of song and sound, melody and texture, the intangible and the palpable, that in an abstract sense recalls the more fractured and loose end of the 70?s krautrock movement.

    "The basis of the album was a series of ?eld recordings of tones and unintentional harmonies that I made in the summer & fall of 2013 - whistling industrial air conditioners, bird songs, locust drones, washing machines - that I mimicked or interpreted on the guitar, making loops that developed into fuller compositions. Several of the pieces are recreations of harmony loops that I heard in a series of extraordinarily vivid dreams, and then woke up and recorded. A few pieces had lyrics and vocal parts that I ultimately removed; at a certain point the album became an exercise in restraint, so I strove to leave only what I felt absolutely essential.

    Unlike most of my previous recordings, there are no digital / software after-effects on the album; all sounds are from analog tape and / or my few guitar pedals." Thomas Meluch (Benoit Pioulard).

    Benoit Pioulard

    Hymnal

      Hymnal is the fourth kranky album by Thomas Meluch under his musical alias Benoit Pioulard, following Précis (2006), Temper (2008) and Lasted (2010). It was written and recorded throughout a year spent in southeastern England and on the European mainland, during which the ubiquity of religious iconography and grandiose cathedrals became an unexpected muse.

      Raised as a Catholic but never especially pious, Meluch drew on this aspect of social history as the basis for Hymnal's 12 chapters. He notes a particular preoccupation with the ways that faith offers a sense of solace and belonging in an existence that inherently provides none, framed in a context of tradition, ritual and the notion of the eternal.

      Themes aside, Hymnal contains some of Meluch's most expansive instrumental works (“Knell”, “Gospel”) and fully realized pop compositions (“Hawkeye”, “Reliquary”, “Margin”), making for a rich and dynamic long-playing arc. Also featured are string arrangements by kranky label mate Felix and guitar work from ambient maestro Kyle Bobby Dunn.

      NB: The album's cover depicts the dessicated interior of a centuries-old tree on the estate of surrealist Edward James in West Sussex; it was felled be an invasive, parasitic black fungus while still alive and verdant.

      Benoit Pioulard

      Temper

        "Temper" is the second album by Thomas Meluch under his Benoit Pioulard nom de guerre. Benoit Pioulard creates crystalline folk-pop teeming with fragile vocals, acoustic guitars, electronics, and percussion in a hazy shoegaze style that's more than a little easy to fall in love with. With a broad palette of instruments that lately includes harmonium and cello, he constructs diverse arrangements that skirt the borders of pop with beautiful, detailed atmospheres. The scope and sonic narratives of songs like "A Woolgathering Exodus" and "Golden Grin" exhibit new degrees of musicality, while the weightlessness of "Brown Bess" or "Sweep Generator" reflects the unrestrained context in which the record was produced.


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