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Last Active 12-23-19 9:27 pm
Joined 09-16-14
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| TRISOMIE 21: Don't you forget us #10
Tenth instalment in my forgotten/dismissed/underappreciated Post-Punk bands list series: For this episode, I took under my magnifying glass a band enthusiastic about two things, Down Syndrome and electronic obscurity that might force that exact syndrome upon you. | | 15 |  | Trisomie 21
Black Label
I am rather baffled by this one. I feel like I should probably hate it, given the fact that is pretty much a pure driving Pop-Rock album. But it's the closest the band has come to an actual Coldwave-less Post-Punk. The vocals don't really fit the general aesthetic and they often distract from the music, but by this point in the band's career you as listeners should probably already be accustomed to the odd vocal tone. However, the biggest gripe with the record is the off-putting production that just muffles all the instrumentation and makes it quite unbearable. A critical misstep with little to no potency or music of interest. And to think that a slightly cleaner production could have slavaged it all...
Go-to tracks: Half a Drop, Shadows Army, Outside the Door | | 14 |  | Trisomie 21
Plays the pictures
In spite of the fact that this is a 23-track, almost an hour long album, there isn't a lot to say about it. It consists of rarely longer tracks (average length of a track here is about two minutes) and rarely realised ideas, each mostly divided into parts that are scattered throughout the record. Musical themes usually reach from ambient-ish bore you'd hear at a spa centre, to a bit one-dimensional, but strangely intricately layered, mostly directionless artsy-fartsy oddities. Now, I probably come off more negative than anything else, but I still admire the ambition behind the album. Though I don't believe the ambition had any root or goal in particular, to be honest.
Go-to tracks: Right to Reply (1), W.S.W. (West-South-West), Take the Shock Away | | 13 |  | Trisomie 21
Happy Mystery Child
Happy Mystery Child is technically the most Trisomie 21 album. It combines all the simplistic lining of the band's previous output and also creates a certain, almost doctor's office kind of pristine, straightforward lavishness. On the other hand, that sterility makes it all the more dreadful at times. It's an album that doesn't really bore or tire, but is the least likely to stick in mind.
Go-to tracks: She Died for Love, The Touch of Any Flame, Personal Feelings | | 12 |  | Trisomie 21
Gohohako
A stylistic follow-up to Plays the Pictures, but with a more experienced and mature edge to it. The band doesn't try to slap together a mirage of uneventful, artsy oddities, although they still do engage in that utterly unremarkable one/two-minutes-long-vignette kind of songwriting (even though they expanded it to about three minutes long this time). It's a more focused work, a wiser sibling, a further improvement, a fresh start. Even the music became more meditative, on place of just sounding like disposable pool mood-setter. Often times it even comes off slightly exotically at times (take the song "Disaster Lover" for example).
Go-to tracks: Disaster Lover, Sweeping Train, The Green Fuse, Gohohako | | 11 |  | Trisomie 21
Million Lights - A Collection of Songs
Much to their misfortune arriving a bit late onto the Slowcore scene, Trisomie 21 have still proven that they are indeed capable of breathing freely in the genre. Million Lights is dark, as dark as a proper Slowcore album should be. The interminable build-ups are meant to end either nowhere or in a build-off. Occasional instrumental surprises on the background are also quite fascinating. As a matter of fact, if there's ever been anything Trisomie 21 excelled at, it's the background. This might come off as a criticism (it is not... well, not entirely), but it can sometimes be more intriguing to try to catch all the tiny details in the background music on their songs. Especially then on this album, where the amount of hidden treasures reaches engrossing numbers.
Go-to tracks: There's A Strange Way This Mornig?, The Fairylike Show, Some Twenty One Miles From The Coast, The Clencher | | 10 |  | Trisomie 21
Side by Side
An hour long, most musically conceptual and progressing in waves and through layers, this is either the band's most ambitious or their most carelessly crafted effort yet. And given the subtlety in music the band usually displays, it's hard to determine just how more ambitious is this compared to their other outputs. Adding one of their best songs, "Il Se Noie", from their debut EP was a nice touch and it definitely goes well with the rest of the album and its freely flowing, smoothly built, calm and soothing nature. It's ann incredibly liberating experience and definitely band's most fluent and gentle release.
Go-to tracks: Il Se Noie, Jakarta, Betrayed, A New Outset | | 9 |  | Trisomie 21
Wait and Dance
Pretty much the start of their off-colour electronica craze. On this EP you'll find a rather odd array of sounds, each reaching from mundanely grey to cosmically colourful. While the album preceding this, Passions divisées, already established the band's electronic direction, it was this EP that truly solidified the fact that the band is going not just New Wave and experimental, but downright obscure, mixing off-beat tones and shapeless rhythms to create an oddly cohesive structure of songs. It's quite an experience.
Go-to tracks: Waiting For, Crying Wolf, Son of Time | | 8 |  | Trisomie 21
Passions divisees
All these entries and not once have I talked about the band's affection for repetition. I believe I may have used the term 'building atmosphere', but never did I expand upon that. They build atmosphere by either adding instruments to or raising the volume or distortion on sections repeating themselves. It is a technique I am particularly fond of in Post-Punk, because if done right it could strike with more power than anything else in any other genre, but if unsuccessful it'll ruin the entirety of the song and turn it into a sheer bore. Passions divisées functions on that principle as well. And I mean that pretty much every single song does. Seriously. And for someone as appreciative of that method as myself, this album should probably be a treasure like no other. That is true... from a certain side. But the album just doesn't always deliver in terms of outstanding songwriting, good enough to keep me hooked. | | 7 | | Trisomie 21
Passions divisees
[CON'D]
The songs often don't have a clear finish, but rather repeat themselves and fade away. They are still often brilliant, vibrant and joy-inducing, but not always.
Go-to tracks: See the Devil in Me, Djakarta, Is Anybody Home? (Part 1), No Way | | 6 |  | Trisomie 21
Chapter IV
Once upon an oddity, there was greatness. Chapter IV might not be anyone's go-to good-time record, but it is everyone's got-to challenging record. It may not have unconventional songwriting or off-colour structures, it may not even be the most energetic and atmospherically insane thing you could ever hope to endure, but it is definitely the most frenzied of the lush experiences out there. The band here go out of their way to torment, but grip the listener with irregular soundscapes, fantastic instrumental clashes and slowly building atmosphere of a certain descent into darkness, rather than the explicit absence of light itself. It is an utmost chilling album of fading hope and desolative abhorence towards happiness, where normally sorrow and some refined form of depression usually lies. Still a must-listen.
Go-to tracks: There's No Trouble There, Memories, Nightflight, Your Dream | | 5 |  | Trisomie 21
Distant Voices
Right from the get-go this album was not like the others. Well, the mood and largely the songwriting style was more or less the same, but it kicks off with the song "Shine Ola", which at that point was the first time I have ever heard Trisomie 21 use violin, and they used it is such a poignant and subtle, yet creeping way. The rest of the album is an exercise in "You didn't expect that." How come the least electronic album from a band that positioned itself so intertwined with electronica is their most diverse, magnetic and engulfing expreience yet? Now, the songs sound rather cheesy a lot of the time. They almost become a litle too poppy and sugary, some even seemingly reaching into RnB territory. But their intriguing instrumentation, delicately constructed musical backgrounds and nicely written hooks are just refreshing to listen to.
Go-to tracks: Shine Ola, The Perfect Side of Doubt, Is Anybody Home? (Part 4), Jazz | | 4 |  | Trisomie 21
Elegance Never Dies
So deep into their career, after all the directions they took, they incorporated them into one, slow-burning, constantly building, partially Industrial, atmospheric epiphany. Elegance Never Dies is pretty much a collection of all that made the band great. Be it their longing themes, futuristic solitude in atmosphere, or instrumental collisions, where the background play might very well be more important than the one on the forefront. The songs do tend to follow the same structure, that being the long-winded build-ups to an absolute (ehm) elegance, but nevertheless, it always works, track after track. This might very well be one of the band's most consistent releases to date.
Go-to tracks: Where Men Sit, No Man Can Imagine, Is Anybody Home? (Pt. 5), Over the Noisy Keys, Tender Now, Alice
My review: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/75349/Trisomie-21-Elegance-Never-Dies/ | | 3 |  | Trisomie 21
Works
Philippe Lomprez's French accent is simply adorable. as if it added to the softness of the music just by how gentle his pronunciation of different letters and words is. And the music is soft indeed. There is an extra level of tender loveliness to it, possibly due to echoic synth-organ effects on the background that make it just a notch more atmospheric. The songwriting is also an undisputable highlight. The songs are infectiously catchy, in spite of their slowly building aesthetic. Talking about slow building aesthetic, each cut always ends in an explosion of sorts, but not in a sense that it is a bombastic, overwhelming wankery; more in a sense that it just deflates so naturally and encapsulates the building goodness of the whole track. See, nothing build to a grand pay-off, but rather flows by all elegant and lush only to be fittingly smoothly finished off. | | 2 | | Trisomie 21
Works
[CON'D]
Gripes? Sure, the vocals. The cute accent doesn't salvage their mediocrity, but they do not destabilise the music, so don't be afraid.
Go-to tracks: A Dirge for Love, Betrayed, The Missing Piece, Harbours and Stations, Speak by the Cards | | 1 |  | Trisomie 21
Le Repos Des Enfants Heureux
This is a strange experience. Knowing Trisomie 21's discography, this sounds more like a fully realised result of years and years of dedicated work and crafting of their styles, rather than a shotty debut EP. While the songs don't stray too far away from one another stylistically, you can pretty much see all the different directions they would later go on to make. It feels like an abstract in a scientific paper. The thing you read before the paper itself that sums up everything following it in a few short paragraphs. It might not have the band's most adventurous songs, on the contrary it delves into more patient listening, it still manages to entertain far better than even some of their full length albums did.
Go-to tracks: Il Se Noie, Logical Animals, Breaking Down | |
Papa Universe
12.03.17 | The hiatus is over, expect about ten of these until the end of the year. I wanted to get Trisomie 21 done quicker, but then I found out that they were releasing a new album this year, so I waited until that one's out.
By the way, this is much more fun than reviews... | Papa Universe
12.03.17 | Beginner's Guide:
Il Se Noie
She Died for Love
Where Men Sit
Shine Ola
Memories
The Missing Piece
Jakarta
Waiting For
Disaster Lover | SandwichBubble
12.03.17 | That's a good pick for number 1 ;) | Papa Universe
12.03.17 | So for once I didn't disappoint you with my ranking? | SandwichBubble
12.03.17 | I can't be too mad, I've only heard 3 of these. Might give Works a try if you rank it above Chapter IV and the debut | Gestapo
12.03.17 | Good band ye | DoofusWainwright
12.03.17 | Hmmm, after reading this still not sure these will be my exact thing...I’ll still give them a go nonetheless.
Great work as ever Unique | butcherboy
12.03.17 | Will listen to 1, now while making breakfast.. this better be good, Uni you raving lunatic.. | neekafat
12.07.17 | Really am a fan of these lists dude, super thorough, my kinda style ;) | Papa Universe
12.08.17 | I know I'm doing something right when even neekafat enjoys it. |
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