Praveen & Benoit Pioulard - Songs Spun Simla (Music Related, 2008)

Ce mini-album croise Benoit Pioulard et son ami Praven Sharma. On reconnait le chant de Benoit Pioulard, parfois atone, parfois nonchalant, ainsi que son goût pour le mariage de chansons folk et d'arrangements électroniques doucement ambient.  Praven, quant à lui, est essentiellement connu pour un album orienté IDM sorti sur Neo Ouija quelques années auparavant. De là à penser qu'il s'agit d'un mini-album de Benoit Pioulard et que Praveen n'a fait ''que'' signer les arrangements, il n'y a qu'un pas... que je me garderai bien de franchir! Marqué par un voyage en Inde, Praveen y apporte clairement un plus, dans l'utilisation prononcée de la batterie ou dans la façon dont les boucles tendent - humblement - à faire pencher les morceaux vers un mantra. Un seul reproche: c'est trop court! Et quand on dit ça, c'est bien souvent plus un regret et une qualité qu'un vrai reproche!

Praveen & Benoit Pioulard
Songs Spun Simla
CD Music Related ML21 (USA, 08-2008)

01. The Tunnel Is Still There
02. Death as a Man
03. To Scale
04. Embers
05. 1991
06. Chiaroscuro

Ce qu'en disait le label :
Praveen Sharma and Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) have met only a handful of times and have never resided in the same city, but over the course of two-plus years they have been quietly assembling Songs Spun Simla, a brief but luminescent collection of pieces driven by Praveen’s inventive arrangements and Benoît’s lush vocal harmonizing. Praveen released his remarkable debut Backed by Spirits on the now-defunct Neo Ouija imprint just as Benoît emerged with the Enge EP on Michigan’s Moodgadget label in early 2005. Through mutual contacts they found that each was an admirer of the other’s work, and the seeds for a casual collaboration were sown. Not long after, Praveen returned from a profound journey through his family’s native India with a minidisk full of field recordings and voices, forming the basis of opener “The Tunnel is Still There”. As he continued creating new songs with an ever-expanding palette of instruments and digital effects, Benoît arranged lyrics and harmonies, driven by the unfamiliarity and excitement of the process. Various ideas arose concerning the fate of these works, but once a record’s worth had been amassed, their friends at Music Related expressed interest in a proper release. Songs Spun Simla is named in honor of the village in India from which Praveen’s family originates – it’s inseparable from his musical inspirations yet still distant and shaped largely by memory. His compostions exist on a fitting scale, then; from the stunning, expansive lead-in of “Death as a Man” to the incredibly detailed percussion of “To Scale”, there’s a sense of worldliness, history and nostalgia placed in a crucible with technology and innovation. Much like a travelogue, the six movements of Songs Spun Simla abut soaring highs with passages of quiet, intimate beauty to create a deeply affecting whole.

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