Description

I Am A Vowel - Et Op La Bang

Reviews

Drone is one of those genre distinctions that, when you hear it described, sounds like a joke. "The humming of high voltage wires." "The sound of ice melting under water." "Music created by sampling stones." There are plenty of examples of how hilariously absurd it can seem when attempting to visually explain the intricacies of such a seemingly monolithic yet potentially textured genre. Adding to the perceived lack of legitimacy is the fact that only in certain cases are such descriptions close to being accurate. In the case of French artist Nelly Larguier’s project I Am a Vowel, however, such left-field textual translations are truly apt.

Her album debut, Et Op La Bang, is a very creative effort that uses nothing but stones and vocals as instruments, with recorded samples cut to pieces and pasted together. The experimental nature of I Am a Vowel might throw a lot of people of, but the result is a very interesting and fresh-sounding sonic mass. Whereas most drone artists tend to make their music thick, layered, and, well, droning, Larguier opts for a more pitched and clicky sound, where sharp cuts bounce peacefully up and down atop a base layer of more traditional drone-like white noise. The immediate results, especially when coupled with the notion of what Et Op La Bang exactly is, makes for a fascinating listen, where every slow (we are talking drone here after all) twist and turn offers something new for hungry ears to feast on.

Larguier also uses her voice to an extent that is rarely heard within the genre; the softness of her vocals rests in a nice contrast with the sharp edges of the rhythms (is it weird to consider rocks clacking together as beats?). Although no traditional lyrics are to be found, Larguier manages to pull off the vocal experimentation without it sounding like a pretentious art-school mess. Of Et Op La Bang’s eight tracks, "Mille Spirale" and "Bang" are the stand outs. Both tracks capture everything that makes I Am a Vowel’s music stand out from a crowd, with their stuttering beats and harmonic vocal experimentation.

Much is made in music criticism, especially when considering experimental electronic structures, of the distinctions between organic and synthetic sounds, and in that traditional context Et Op La Bang’s distinctly synthetic sound presents quite a conundrum. After all, could anything be more organic than stone? // Daniel Svanberg, Lost At Sea

I Am A Vowel release 'Et Op La Bang', a CD of dark dubby ambience & minimal space techno for electro mice. There's a bit that sounds like a mongoloid fly trapped in a griswald & spongetwat flange-ometer. Then a processed vocal snippet surrounds your conscious state, obviously designed to make you stab your neighbours cat in the head with a garden hoe. This is music for people obsessed with the tortured echoes of moths trapped in abandoned piping in a dank cellar under a motorway bypass at 3 in the morning. Wibbling glitchy tap drip bad hallucinogenic woodlice-tronica. // Norman Records

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