French experimental musician Laurent Guérel, makes ambient music under the name Mokuhen. This past May he teamed up with Julien Beau and together they delivered exquisitely warped ambiance on their Paysage accidenté #1 LP, out now on the Paris-based label Tsuku Boshi. Today, we listen to tracks from Mokuhen’s newest long-player, La Barricade du cygne–also out on the label.
The title translates as The Barricade of the swan and it is a sound interpretation of the book by Tunisian writer Hubert Haddad.
Guérel’s sonic work often flows like musique concréte and the tracks on this playlist demonstrate his ability for creating a cinematic sense of drift that still feels like forward motion. While the varied hum and drone of Mokuhen’s sounds are often hard to place, there is also an eerie familiarity due to his incorporation of field recordings and what sounds like electroacoustic elements.
Initial tracks like “J’entends La Mer Monter“, the collection’s opener, hang on the edge of the hearable, balancing these strange auditory elements against generous portions of negative space–or the high pitched whir of tape hiss. Rhythmic elements enter randomly, like the sounds of a ghost moving furniture in another room or a tugboat door banging in the wind.
The tracks on La Barricade du cygne also often flow seamlessly into each other like the shorter cuts offered on this playlist, “Puis Il Y Eut La Guerre” and “Le Vent Me Parlait“–tracks 5 and 6 respectively. Building from its silent opening into an aquatic drone space teaming with textured activity, “Puis Il Y Eut La Guerre” overflows into “Le Vent Me Parlait” where it simmers in deep water activity.
More industrial in tone, “Ses Pieds Brulaient Par Le Bas” follows, building into a formidable drone that sounds like a giant machine sliding sheets of metal against each other to generate an inwardly spiraling tension. Eventually the low end of the tone subsides, leaving only it’s electrically charged ether to resonate before running into the album’s next cut, “Il Y Avait Aussi Un Grand Oiseau Noir Silencieux“. Here, rhythmic elements sound off like drum bursts against blasts of white noise, while a demented bird seems to “caw” from deep within the chaos.
Continuing in a consecutive progression, this playlist also includes the late album offerings, “La Constellation Du Cygne Brillait Sur Ma Tete” and “Elle N’est Plus Là La Ville D’Is“. The former is more ethereal and it eventually hangs in the air like twilight as an echoing bell ping-pongs between the speakers, offering an oddly focusing tone. Eventually, though, this calm gives way to the fever dream that is, “Elle N’est Plus La La Ville D’Is”. Here, a black swan floats around a shallow brown lake as a three-legged horse gallops around the perimeter. Dragonflies buzz in the hot air before a formidable summer storm brings a toxic rain of white noise and the reverberating thunder of wind.
Ultimately, La Barricade du cygne is the kind of offering that encourages a deep and close listen. Blending electroacoustic elements and found sounds with computer processing, Mokuhen has crafted a sonic narrative that can function as an engrossing and detailed listen, or the perfect ambiance to lose oneself to drift and dream.
[…] Listen: Mokuhen ‘La Barricade du cygne’ Playlist […]