BENOIT PIOULARD レコード& CD

Review: 'Précis' is the first album from Thomas Meluch under his musical pseudonym Benoît Pioulard. Following a series of limited, handmade cassette and CDR releases for friends and family over the last several years, and the well-received 'Enge EP' (Moodgadget 2005), 'Précis' arose as a documentation of a coming to terms with impermanence, marked by analog residue and the imperfections of human influence. A multi-instrumentalist with an insatiable palette, Pioulard bases most of his songs on treated acoustic guitars and honeyed vocals, backed by carefully layered bells, bass, dulcimer, old tape samples, field recordings and myriad other sources. These sounds, though sculpted roughly into pop songs, have their own delicate patterns of ebb and flow, distortion and disappearance. From the sunny refrain of 'Triggering Back' to the descent of nighttime chills on 'Needle & Thread', 'Précis' sighs in time with the seasons. It's an album about him, her, and you; it's an exaltation of the ways these things end. Thomas Meluch is a 21-year old from Michigan fascinated with the sounds of nature and tape decay. Through almost a decade of recording, he has fostered an infatuation with a sort of sonic density that combines remnants of pop song structures with the lushness of painstakingly assembled overdubs that the home recording process affords him. He was recently featured on the Ghostly International compilation Idol Tryouts Two.