It’s perhaps strange to say that an artist whose music is so calm, cool, and reflective as Benoît Pioulard is on fire this year, but it’s not inaccurate. So far in 2015, Pioulard (aka Seattle transplant Thomas Meluch) has released the instant classic of gilded-dewdrop elegiac-bliss tunes, Sonnet (Kranky Records), a self-released CD and cassette titled Stanza and Stanza II, an icily beautiful drone-song collab with experimental guitarist Kyle Bobby Dunn under the name Perils, and Noyaux, a preternaturally tranquil four-track EP that comes out today on Morr Music. If you like your music suffused with peaceful yet somber vibes, Benoît Pioulard can supply you with abundant quantities of it.
Noyaux’s title track gets the EP off to a most beatific start: A simple yet utterly poignant drone suggestive of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, Brian Eno’s “Discreet Music,” and this one setting on FM3’s Buddha Machine to which I’ve drifted to sleep many nights buoys you to your happiest, calmest place. Wispier whispers of sound you will not find on a release this year. “Ante” and “Plainchant” follow in a slightly more expansive but no less airy vein, like some new, improved species of New Age music for the 21st century. “Remind” is a gorgeous slow-motion chillout piece that you can imagine Boards of Canada using as a foundation for something off The Campfire Headphase. “Remind”‘s crystalline undulations send you off to the sundown-glow vanishing point with incomparable serenity. I can’t stress enough how effective Noyaux is at relieving stress.
Benoît Pioulard plays a Beacon Hill house show Friday November 13 with Bardo:Basho.
