专辑简介

by François Couture

Four years after his successful first album for Rephlex, Pierre Bastien is back with more automaton tunes and palindromic titles. His technique remains the same -- i.e., producing music played by mechanical contraptions, each automaton usually making one or two sounds, the composer's art residing in both designing the "players" and arranging their "contributions" into orchestrated pieces. It seems complicated on paper, but it actually sounds effortless, and that is only one of the wonders in Bastien's music. Tubes fitted with carefully placed spikes rotate above a keyboard to play chords and spiked wheels strike guitar strings, while other devices activate a turntable, blow into a trumpet, and hit various percussion instruments -- all this in time and in tune. The music has a childlike feel, with a certain Hans Reichel quality in the melodies. And if you think all the minutia invested in (literally) assembling this music makes it sound cold, think again: tracks like "Eye" and "Tut" sound surprisingly human, thanks to the shaky nature of these automatons. The latter tune even has a vocal part scratched out of a slab of vinyl. And "Eke" has a sweet trumpet melody (one of the few instruments Bastien is likely to play himself, although the booklet contains no information to that effect) and kalimba accompaniment reminiscent of Klimperei's naïve instrumentals. Suitably poppier than any of the engineer's previous efforts, Pop may not cover new ground, but it adds quality material to Bastien's oeuvre.