Returning to normalcy after my wedding had the vague air of coming back into consciousness after a severe
panic attack; in the aftermath of all of the activity and sensory overload,
one’s overtaken by a relief that elicits a short-lived serenity. Getting back
to a regular routine after all of the wedding planning put me in a peaceful
frame of mind that desired only restrained music.
With Plays Thelma,
so began my post-classical autumn. Its MP3s were waiting when we pulled in from
the airport and became my go-to record the following morning, basking in the
morphing character of ‘Malick’ and ‘Calder’ as I passed changing foliage.
Pioulard designed this mini-album as an imaginary place – “a lake within a
haze” – and these compositions, often string-laden or tempered by found-sounds,
succeed in mapping out a quaint territory for the mind to wander over and over.
In the process, these songs thread together my favourite ambient piece of 2011
but, what’s more: Thelma became my sanctuary.
The hit-or-miss qualities of ambient music are intensely personal; a patient test of tonal shifts and buried details which eventually latch onto one’s mind-frame, their personality, or fall by the wayside. The majority of today’s ambient fare assumes the latter’s fate but those rare exceptions, in my experience, usually become the sort I cherish for years on end. Finding records of this quality used to be difficult but Desire Path Recordings is dutifully making my search easier. Setting pace with memorable releases by Solo Andata and Kyle Bobby Dunn, the new imprint has now struck a three-peat with Benoît Pioulard’s enigmatic score Thelma.
Documenting an imaginary landscape – what Pioulard refers to as “a lake within a haze” – this mini-album wastes no time transporting listeners to a foreign place. ‘Malick’ opens the set already in bloom; a reserved piece circling its quaint corners but also instilling a sense of familiarity, of belonging. That warmth bleeds into the stretching strings of ‘A Land Which Has No End’, tuneful bouts of reverberation in ‘Calder’, and the heavenly coda of aptly titled ‘Autochoral’ with a retiring, autumnal sensibility. Pioulard’s gift for incepting so many mixed emotions in these pieces is trumped only by an ability to place listeners within his aural geography. Yes, Thelma’s lovely cover-art (featuring photograph done by Sean Curtis Patrick) goes some distance in establishing the song-cycle’s peaceful, remote vibe but Pioulard imparts each track with its own textural character – be it one that lurches from the clouds (‘Malick’), one that pools as if from a leaky tap (‘Pidgin’) or as a textile of lost voices (‘Hushes Gasp’).
None of these strengths properly explain my obsessive connection to Thelma, but that’s par for the course with desirable ambient records. As a mini-album, Benoît Honoré Pioulard Plays Thelma’s direct but still teasing, engaging but fleeting. It colours moods that are explicitly autumn to me, and I’ve no doubt that Pioulard’s latest will remain a coveted favourite of mine for years to come.
