SYLVIA MONNIER | Second Thought

Album, Cassette, Digital /


BLWBCK053 | Release Date : 19th May, 2014
Tape {66 c.} C40 / Digital
(orders includes advanced digital album)

For his Sylvia Monnier project, the french artist Mickael Perez focuses on a musical approach resolutely based on the drone. Nevertheless, as the ideas are taking shape, his approach is regularly phagocyted by other styles, particularly ambient music. It’s this growing absorption, this occasional and soothing shock of the opposites that fascinates us so much on Second Thought, his new cassette. In a world where sense of grace and mystery has disappeared, Sylvia Monnier’s music is like an oracle, having the capacity to transmute reality into musical aesthetics. Influenced by the freedom and weirdness of the current experimental scene as well as by the orthodoxy of different European Electroacoustic trends, his music carefully works the sound’s rawness, trying to make it nearly palpable by juxtaposing it to sweet tones, equally revealing by the way her aquatic and earthly material. This modus operandi generates some musical epiphanies where the universal and the singular, the unreal and the concrete are combined together. This is a purpose which first seems to be inexpressible but it’s so perfectly achieved on Second Thought that it’s became reality. – Frédéric Foreau

1. Desire (8:58)
2. The Girl with Prefabricated Hearth (10:16)
3. Ruth, Roses & Revolvers (8:36)
4. Discs (10:47)

recorded, mixed & mastered by Mickael Perez in Lyon, France – 2014

Instrumens :
Technics SY 1010, Dave Smith Mopho, Clavia Nord Rack 2, Roland Space Echo, Roland TR 606, TC Electronic Flashback Delay, Boss DS-1, Loop Station RC-3.
http://sylviamonnier.bandcamp.com/

PRESS QUOTES
4 titres fleuves et autant d’abstractions hypnotiques à l’aura lancinante pour cette nouvelle sortie cassette du Lyonnais Mika Perez aka Sylvia Monnier, que l’on n’est pas surpris de voir débarquer chez BLWBCK tant ses flots nostalgiques (dés)incarnés en vagues de radiations flottant dans le cosmos épousent à merveille l’esthétique rétro-futuriste et majestueuse du label toulousain. Second Thought sort le 19 mai, en voici la primeur rien que pour vous. Ex Sunny Dunes, le plasticien également connu sous le nom de Kira Perov continue donc de sculpter drones magnétiques et grouillements kosmische sur ce fascinant nouvel opus, dont les flux et reflux synthétiques embrassent l’immensité et les mystères de la voûte céleste tandis que les loops de pulsations caoutchouteuses (Desire), les arpeggiators tournoyants (Discs) et autres glitchs oscillatoires au second plan (Ruth, Roses & Revolvers) en remuent sans cesse la matière, contrastant avec la quiétude des nappes de synthés pour interroger nos tourments intérieurs. – IndieRockMag

Sylvia Monnier celebrates early industrial bands with the deeply strange “Second Thought”. Throughout the album Sylvia Monnier changes moods multiple times going from creepy to charming. Repetitive structures help the tracks bloom into their engrossing concoctions. Everything remains compelling for equally different reasons. With such a wide array of approaches “Second Thought” manages to truly excel at offering a wide view of what such seemingly simple methods can achieve.
“Desire” opens up with a beat that could easily be found on a Container track. The progression of time allows the synthesizer to swell up growing increasingly more threatening. By the time it fully blooms into a devouring darkened fall halfway through the piece it reveals Sylvia Monnier’s keen sense of pacing. Much lighter than the previous track it employs minimal effects to truly achieve its goals. “Ruth, Roses & Revolvers” is mostly unclassifiable. On it Sylvia Monnier flirts with differing styles: from drone to noise to near-ambient. Instability within the track means it is unable to find a straight path.
The album closes with the highlight of “Desire”. Beginning off with static noises and a general swell of sound the sound builds up. By allowing the sounds to cycle through the piece remains the most optimistic piece in the entire collection. Melodically it is tender in nature with the organ-type sound conveying a sense of a perfect clear blue hazy day. Random noises float in threatening to derail the sense of serene calm yet they never do. “Second Thought” is a wonderfully varied mix and a fine homage to early industrial. – Beach Sloth (7.6/10)