CD, LAC Records, 2008
www.laurentchambert.com
This release consists of a single, 50-minute piece that was part of an audio and visual performance by Laurent Chambert, a versatile multimedia artist from France. It begins with sounds of birds mixed with some light drones on the background, which sounds really nice for an intro; calm and relaxing, it sort of puts me into a nice and peaceful place while listening to it, a place where nothing bad could be happening at all. He then adds some textures, layered on top of each other, to give the work a more dramatic feeling. The use of delay just after the intro reminds of some trip-hop tricks, sounding nice on that particular piece of atmospheric ambience because it actually changes the previous texture radically; sort of an unexpected movement, a slap on the face telling you to go to somewhere else instead of stay still. Like a road with many junctions and exits and signs, it points you to somewhere, and represents something rather than saying nothing at all. The piece goes on changing textures and transporting the listener to different places as the artist’s mood changes from minute to second.
Halfway, things start to get sort of scary with some dark noise, but that also doesn’t take the chilled aspect out of the piece, as the noise is neither frightening nor that dark, however for those who are not used to it, it might make you turn the lights on. There are also some voices when the dark noise comes in, like radio talk, and while the ambience gets more obscure by the second, you start to ask yourself where it comes from, as things change from nice, chilled ambient to dark noisy drone. The end evokes the beginning, and for me the whole tune is actually a trip in a forest – it starts off well and it gets weird as I get deeper and deeper into the woods. At the very end the artist puts me into a spaceship and flies me to the stars, where I can see myself wandering around in the woods, only to come back and face my reality. Am I lost? What exactly am I doing here?
I really liked listening to “Eurêka”, from beginning to end. It somehow captivated me, because it was so nicely mixed and has a fluid sequence that actually proves the artist’s ability to manipulate ambient drones, textures, some little beats and some percussion elements layered with nice, chilled synths, as well as proves his ability to vary sounds. I would love to see the images he came up with to better experience the piece, but as far as I am concerned the song is quite nice. If you want to chill out as well as be a bit afraid, or go adventuring in the woods, you should put this EP on your headphones, sit back and enjoy its strange, inner-dualistic beauty.
[8/10]
— João Ricardo