Élg

Vu Du Dôme

Editions Gravats

MP3 $9.90

04/06/2018 5060165483792

GRVTS012

FLAC $11.99

04/06/2018 5060165483792

GRVTS012

“Editions Gravats follow up that killer EP of mutant Dancehall bangers from label co-founder Low Jack with this completely wild, spellbinding mix of avant-garde electronics and chanson by truly original contemporary artist Laurent Gérard a.k.a. Èlg, part of the same broad scene that includes everyone from Ghédalia Tazartès to PAN’s Bill Kouligas, Luke Younger / Helm, Milan’s insane (und essential) Hundebiss crew and even Alan Bishop and Dylan Nyoukis with whom Èlg has also collaborated. Huge recommendation if you’re into anything from the PAN label to Recollection GRM, Ghedalia Tazartes or even Throbbing Gristle & Coil...

Vu Du Dôme is a staggeringly strange, brilliantly kaleidoscopic album resembling a sort of dramaturgy of a waking dream. It feels like a stroll around a topiary maze at twilight on a warm night, with Èlg acting as a spectral protagonist narrating in first person while a supporting cast including Catherine Hershey, Borja Flames and Ernest Bergez make the trip more unfathomable.

Forming a bridge between improbable dimensions of GRM / musique concrète, electro-acoustic and chanson spheres, Èlg riddles his music with a literal and metaphorical take on sound poetry; blending French language vocals against quietly enigmatic, impeccably produced backdrops whose low, shifting lighting and mid-fi resolution lends them to comparisons with illusive theatre stage designs as much as the overgrown corners of the imagination explored by Luc Ferrari or Èlg’s Reines D’Angleterre bandmate Ghédalia Tazartès before him.

A dusty revenant, a peaceful messenger: Èlg plays all those roles simultaneously. Combining pointedly purposed production and cryptic incantation, he acts as a souterrain psychopomp relaying energies from one reality to another, taking care not to stray too far explicitly in either direction and hold his ground ambiguously with the nous of an ancient Greek play or the kind of pathos and logic likely to baffle a computer. Taken in context of Roope Eronen’s artwork - a naif illustration of smiling cone faces on a bouncy castle - each listener’s perception of Vu Du Dôme is bound to differ from the next in an all too rare and precious way that’s testament to the genius avant-garde vision of its mercurial creator.

As we’ve said before; there may well be an underlying logic to Èlg, but we’re buggered if we can pick it out. All we know is that he’s just gone and made one of the most weirdly addictive and forward thinking, fxcked up pop albums we’ve heard for time…”—Boomkat