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Benoît Pioulard – Eidetic (2023)
Review:
Thomas Meluch has such a specific and distinctive aesthetic that subtle variations within his sound catch the ear. His default setting is an amorphous wash of warbling, nostalgia-drenched tones, punctuated by muffled percussion, plucked nylon-string guitar and his hushed, multi-tracked voice. Patterns begin to emerge in his songwriting methods the more you listen, such as his fondness for introducing tambourine into the right channel to inject energy into a song, or fading a gentle rush of soft-focus bells into a glimmering instrumental. Just as you begin to tune out, the next song might shift a little, introducing a steel-string acoustic or electric guitar to allow the instrumental timbres to brighten in the mix. The sounds themselves are gorgeous, but it’s the ebb and flow of Eidetic that maintains interest. Meluch has been working in this vein under his Benoit Pioulard moniker for the last 15 years or so, and he drifts back and forth between instrumental and vocal-led releases. Eidetic offers a pleasing balance of both styles. Though they’re kept to a few minutes each, immersive instrumentals such as “Margaret Murie” and “Where To” feel like they could drift on indefinitely. In contrast, galloping guitar-led tracks such as “Thursday Night” inject a slightly manic early-Animal Collective energy, like being shaken from staring listless at a campfire and swept into a stirring, clapping sing-along. The true outlier is “The Void,” a breezy, beachy sway that momentarily puts one in mind of the retro British summertime sounds of Cliff Richards and the Shadows. Quite a shift from the shadowy, mossy, forest vibes of the rest of the record, but it works. After 45 minutes, when Eidetic draws to a close in a blur of tape hiss and bird song, it feels like waking from a dream. Though the album title refers to being able to recall specific mental images in detail, the hazy ambiguity of Benoit Pioulard’s music leaves the listener in a pleasingly disoriented daze. — dusted
Track List:
01 - Margaret Murie
02 - Crux
03 - Nameless
04 - Eidetic
05 - Thursday Night
06 - Halve
07 - Osco Drug
08 - Lillian Isola
09 - Safn
10 - Maple Seed
11 - Viridiana
12 - Tet
13 - God Innocent Controller
14 - The Void
15 - Alces
16 - Pastel Dust
17 - Where To
Media Report:
Genre: ambient, indie-folk
Origin: Brooklyn, New York, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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