Reviews
Benoit Pioulard
Precis
Digg this review.
Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2006-12-03
So, how about that time I fell in love? Oh right, it just happened, as I pressed play and was swept off my feet by Precis and its masterful creator, Benoit Pioulard (aka Tom Meluch).
The man is only in his early twenties, and he is creating big sounds from a small space. The album was put together and recorded in the corner of the artist’s room, late at night, sometimes even using pillows as sound makers. I guess it goes to show that one doesn’t need much to make genius.
The 15 songs of Precis are amazingly crafted pieces of art and nothing quite like what I’ve heard before. They are woven together to tell his story, not just random songs thrown together to make a CD. I love his simplicity, maturity and flow, and the random, interesting and unusual sounds throughout.
Since my curiosity was certainly sparked by Precis (clearly an understatement), I decided to look further into this man and surely enough, I now love him even more. His website is beautifully put together using Polaroid imagery, and everything I read about him made me decide that I want him to be my future husband. How many men actually hang on to their journals from their childhoods and use some of its material to craft music? Or come up with their monikers on a notepad, after it had been jotted down in the middle of the night? My only problem is the fact that I need a cheat-sheet to pronounce and spell this name of his.
I somewhat feel wrong telling you any more about this album. It was a great experience the first time I heard it, and it continues to be so as it haunts me with its bells, acoustic guitar, electrical bursts and Pioulard’s whispering voice. Each song brought with it a different emotion, led me by the hand into my imagination and let me dream.
As the record progresses you get a clearer sense of who Pioulard is and where he’s coming from, and personally, I can’t help myself: when the record comes to an end and I press repeat to start it up all over again. I was captured right from the beginning, with a powerful entry and exit and simple enchantment in-between. The more I listen and learn, the more appreciative of his music and talent I become.
“It sounds like a folk band playing in dense forest from forty yards away. It sounds like a grainy, jumpy home movie of your childhood vacation to the great Northwest. It sounds like what you might hear on a romantic late-summer picnic on Venus. It sounds like the album’s cover art. It sounds like nothing else you’ll hear this year.” Stylus Magazine wrote that, I couldn’t agree more.
I personally love what I hear, see, read and feel. Benoit Pioulard, will you marry me?
Score: 8.9
- Aldona