Review Summary: The companion piece to Sonnet is nothing more than an excellent add-on.
Stanza is the companion piece to
Sonnet, the LP Meluch (aka. Benoit Pioulard) released last month on Kranky. Initially available only to those lucky 25 who grabbed themselves
Sonnet's bespoke handmade CD package,
Stanza's paired release is typical of Meluch who, at the very least, cannot be accused of failing to thoroughly flesh out his ideas. His previous album as Benoit Pioulard,
Hymnal, was attached to a variety of accompanying releases including
Roanoke, the demo tape and a 19-track remix disk – all of which gave a new vantage point to view their mother-album's novel folk-drone world.
Stanza works similarly, although Meluch's decision to soften his approach for
Sonnet then soften them again here might have old fans confused. Compared to some of his early work,
Stanza is an echo of an echo: extremities like vocals and acoustic finger picking have been thrown out the studio for the watercolour wash of guitar drones and cassettes; looped on top of itself so the echo carries on forever.
It could be said that
Stanza doesn't stand for much, but then again it could be said that it really doesn't need to. The album title betrays its nature as a collection of music conveying particular moments rather than the whole picture. In fact, it sounds like Meluch has teased out some minute ideas of the more progressive
Sonnet and set them under a microscope, revealing half an hour of sound that fell through the gaps. It's the audio equivalent of zooming in on a low-resolution photograph to reveal new detail but finding it slightly foggier than the overall image.
Taking such concepts out of context has the affect of blurring Meluch's already hushed sound. Where parts of
Sonnet were described as a “lost radio broadcast fighting through static” [1], the radio broadcast of
Stanza has given up trying to be found. In its forlorn, looping way, the high end of Meluch's drone wash is too entrenched in the overall noise to have a separate identity of its own. Instead, it moves as one with the formless mold of sound.
With so much stripped away, the only thing labeling
Stanza as a Benoit Pioulard release is that it's actually rather good. All seven loops are excellent examples of gentle, unintrusive music: never boring but distant and sparse enough to make melodies of any interfering noise. Say, birdsong, in an ideal scenario, or in my case the joint rumbling of traffic and a snoring cat. But while it might be a good ambassador for traditional ambient ideals, it doesn't have enough ideas of its own to become anything more than an add-on; which it is, so it's hard to complain.
