2023 - France
Dream Pop, Ambient Pop
New label, new sonic identity, new instruments, five years later, Grand Blanc come back to show us the hidden face of coldwave. Starting with field recordings and a masterfully well-used harp, Loon already tells us everything there is to know. This is going to be a quieter ride. The night is still here, vivid, but the past neons are replaced by irridescent landscapes. Flowing back and forth, Camille Delvecchio and Benoît David, Grand Blanc’s vocalists, are more than ever lying low in the shadows, slowly swinging through laconic dreams. Keep your ears open, the beauty is in the shade, the whispers, it’s almost interstitial. Minimalist music for big emotions, contemplative and soft but… there still is something threatening hiding somewhere. If Mémoires Vives was about life as a fever and a frightening future, and Image au mur about life as a memory, Halo is now about life as a very present moment. The band recorded this abum far away from the city, in a place inhabited by sounds of leaves, sounds of rivers and sounds of trees. On Orange and Dans le jardin la nuit, we hear the band chasing the brightest colours inside a deep dark night. Because even when Grand Blanc feels more at peace than ever, they can’t let go of their early fever.
Among the discreet melodies, it’s hard to hear any powerful loop, or an instrument in particular to cling to throughout the songs. Your ears are constantly travelling from one point of view to another. Never fixed, always on the move. That way, each time you relisten to the album, the experience changes. New colours, new melodies, it’s all drifting. Sometimes a sudden gust of wind rises in intensity but you won’t be witnessing any big explosions in here. It’s a withdrawn place we’re living in, a place where multiple winds fly by but never settle. That feeling is something you can catch during nayan. A guitar line leads the show, while the background is filled with the sound of water running, voices, a beating drum and, sometimes, an abrasive guitar. It lasts less than two-minutes and sounds exactly like a preparing session of musician as well as a very well orchestrated short music piece. The following tracks, Nuit des temps and Immensité revive Grand Blanc’s best songwriting and lyricism. Empty places meshes with memories of the big city, while insomniacs recite poetry to fight their darker thoughts. With an organic saxophone and rough synths, these two tracks participate to make this record bigger. Dark, sweet, melancholic and disquieting, this is Grand Blanc at their very best.
Disquieting. Especially when you listen to Pilule Bleue’s ending as well as Fleur. There’s a banging sound in the distance. Behind the doors, behind the trees, is it something from the past ? Or a desire to dive into old habits ? These sounds don’t have any precisely defined orgins. It’s a mystery inside the music that doesn’t have to be answered. Suddenly, you just feel this powerful rush living behind the soft melodies, and while electronic textures take over the organic ones, the only thing you’re left with is unexplained tears. And when we’re reaching the end with Free Solo and finally Cercle, the rush that was hiding in the back is now up front. After all this time spent in an eerie and blurry world, it’s almost strange to feel these instruments so close to your ears once again, it’s almost like coming back from a deeply buried dream and finally facing the reality of the world around you. But that oneiric trip in the great outside was more than nourishing. Because in the end, it’s reassuring to know that this safe place will always be there for you to hide in whenever you feel the need to withdrawn from the city.
Among the discreet melodies, it’s hard to hear any powerful loop, or an instrument in particular to cling to throughout the songs. Your ears are constantly travelling from one point of view to another. Never fixed, always on the move. That way, each time you relisten to the album, the experience changes. New colours, new melodies, it’s all drifting. Sometimes a sudden gust of wind rises in intensity but you won’t be witnessing any big explosions in here. It’s a withdrawn place we’re living in, a place where multiple winds fly by but never settle. That feeling is something you can catch during nayan. A guitar line leads the show, while the background is filled with the sound of water running, voices, a beating drum and, sometimes, an abrasive guitar. It lasts less than two-minutes and sounds exactly like a preparing session of musician as well as a very well orchestrated short music piece. The following tracks, Nuit des temps and Immensité revive Grand Blanc’s best songwriting and lyricism. Empty places meshes with memories of the big city, while insomniacs recite poetry to fight their darker thoughts. With an organic saxophone and rough synths, these two tracks participate to make this record bigger. Dark, sweet, melancholic and disquieting, this is Grand Blanc at their very best.
Disquieting. Especially when you listen to Pilule Bleue’s ending as well as Fleur. There’s a banging sound in the distance. Behind the doors, behind the trees, is it something from the past ? Or a desire to dive into old habits ? These sounds don’t have any precisely defined orgins. It’s a mystery inside the music that doesn’t have to be answered. Suddenly, you just feel this powerful rush living behind the soft melodies, and while electronic textures take over the organic ones, the only thing you’re left with is unexplained tears. And when we’re reaching the end with Free Solo and finally Cercle, the rush that was hiding in the back is now up front. After all this time spent in an eerie and blurry world, it’s almost strange to feel these instruments so close to your ears once again, it’s almost like coming back from a deeply buried dream and finally facing the reality of the world around you. But that oneiric trip in the great outside was more than nourishing. Because in the end, it’s reassuring to know that this safe place will always be there for you to hide in whenever you feel the need to withdrawn from the city.