ADAADAT.CO.UK
ADAADAT.CO.UK
ADAADAT.CO.UK
YOU CAN ALSO GET THE VINYL VERSION FROM ADAADAT RECORDS
ADAADAT.CO.UK
ADAADAT.CO.UK
ADAADAT.CO.UK
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"Le partage des griefs" (which you could translate by "The sharing of the grievances") tells stories and states of mind I couldn't relate with words, which is one of the reason i kept on making music at an age I should have stopped long ago. Stories of things too close or so far from you that you can only guess about without never really understanding them, feelings you can't put a name on.
If all the tracks sounds more serious and dark than everything I did before, I couldn't avoid to mess a bit with titles, and some of them are just a way to laugh at myself for being what I am : a too-concerned-by-himself-average-educated-getting-old-white-western male. What about you?
Basically, art does not interested me, and I just make records instead of writing a journal or letters to my friends. I really hope a few of those weird sounds and melodies will touch your heart, because that's the only thing I ever wanted for my music.
Maybe a new musical life be possible after this record, but the answer is of no importance.
Cheers!
Yan
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REVIEWS :
The Adaadat label has been releasing some of the most interesting electronic-based music of the past few years and their production values are always very high. Great vinyl-pressings and excellent artwork combine to ensure that their records always stand out, whilst on top of this, they maintain an eclectic and intriguing range of artists. This album comes from a French musician who has already released numerous records (often under different names) although by all accounts, this offering is more introspective and perhaps a little more unsettling than his previous work. Like an ambient soundtrack composed by one of the more credible Prog-rock musicians, this at times recalls some of Chris Carters’ solo work, with occasional nods towards Krautrock and some of the early Residents releases. The title translates as ‘The Sharing of Grievances’ and refers to personal feelings that are sometimes difficult to relate in words. The moody, atmospheric tracks relay those feelings perfectly, conveying a real sense of emotional intent. Sometimes quite downbeat, other times much lighter, and works very well. Anyone interested in the type of electronic music that is genuinely interesting within an accessible format, should definitely make efforts to hear this album.
fearandloathingfanzine.com
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Right off the bat, just by looking at album art, you can detect this guy’s sense of humor is intact. But Gallic sound-bender Yan Hart-Lemonnier‘s new 12″ (which runs at 36 minutes) titled Les Partage Des Griefs (roughly translated to Sharing Grievances) has variable tones, from shades of gray to quirky. Speaking of coverart (see above) this one is some kind of melting, moulting, metamorphosizing psychedelic paradise that seems to riff on his previous sleeve for last year’s Le Cœur et la raison. His vision has an adjunct sense of the surreal, and it’s clear in Hart-Lemonnier’s sound that he doesn’t compromise from this singular p.o.v. now that he’s abandoned this alt personas (he’s recorded under several aliases).
On A quoi vous servait l’espoir de toute façon he seemingly puts nature (field recordings?) through electronic filters, turning and churning nature on its head some. There’s something recessing and forlorn here, it’s a lovely melody, filled with color with a downbeat tempo, and plenty of isolated electronics. Baphomet Beach Club is a continuation of these stray elongated tones that I’ll simply call ‘low-phonica’ as a reference point. I wanted to listen to something distinctly of the region before I made my first pilgrimage (this week!) to Paris – and this may be the French new wave right here and now. Speaking of which, even though today marks Thanksgiving day (happy harvest y’all) – I will just be landing at Charles de Gaulle (Roissy) and replacing the turkey (or in my case, Tofurky) with raclette and a crispy baguette this year!
There are darkened drones that flair up along the way, and an atmosphere of potential gloom, though Hart-Lemonnier manages to find balance within the space of airy passages that break the fog as it were. One thing is clear, this is pure electronics of the synthesized variety, something a bit timeless between 70’s German explorations and futuristic speculation, all packaged in intertwined short harmonic delicacies. The title track makes reference (at least for me) of the Qatsi trilogy (Philip Glass).
This record seamlessly fit into one of our most recent podcasts (La grosse banane) and it is on the flipside where the wiggly wry side comes out some. This is also where I start to make connections with sound distortionists like Autopoieses and even the interior sonics of Das Synthetische Mischegewebe. Twisted tones and a drum machine are brought forth on closer, Tout le monde sait mieux que toi. It takes a 180° from the rest of the record with a sense of abandon and proximity to glassy techno, offering a glimmer of the hopeful. This playfulness leads to the wayward gateway into the hypnagogic. And he leaves you there, hanging in suspense and awe.
toneshift.net
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This is my second encounter with the music of this man, following his 'Le Coeur Et La Raison' LP, which I reviewed in Vital Weekly 1135. This time the title translates as 'The Sharing Of Grievances' and I am early with this review; the official release date is February 14, 2020, Valentine's Day. I am sure there is a connection to be made between the title and the release date. Well, that and the music of course. On the previous album, Hart-Lemonnier used keyboard(s) and a drum machine resulting in some funny, quirky, almost 8-bit like music. This new album is a slightly different cake.
I have no idea what happened in the life of Hart-Lemonnier, but this new album has an overall much darker tone. The rhythm machine is handed in and instead, Hart-Lemonnier now has a sampler under his belt, which he uses to create weird sounds and loops them around, splicing them up in real-time. The main ingredient here, however, is the synthesizer tones; dark and ominous, but also with quite a bit of melodic touch. He plays his music in minor chords, a lower rank of the keyboard. It is not necessarily filled with a lot of pathos; Hart-Lemonnier doesn't seem to be interested in creating a new form of the requiem mass. It is not swollen or pretentious; it melancholically touches the keyboard and along with this weird, small samples, of which I have no idea what they are or where they come from. On various occasions I was thinking these were, perhaps vocalizations by Hart-Lemonnier, sounds of the mouth, heavily treated and (maybe?) without a meaning. Of course, I might be entirely wrong here. The oddball track here was 'Tout Le Monde Sait Mieux Que Toi', the last song on the second side and here the drum machine and quirkiness from the previous record returned. I didn't understand that move very much. It broke for me the rather atmospheric flow of the previous seven tracks and came across as a filler of the album. Other than that strange thing, in the end, I thought this was a great record. (FdW)
vitalweekly.net
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Fondateur du label Ego Twister (aujourd’hui disparu) et compositeur atypique, Yan Hart-Lemonnier fait partie de ces personnes que je respecte, au delà même de leur création.
Hors des classifications et des genres, Yan Hart-Lemonnier s’est toujours distingué par sa faculté à composer des albums chargés d’humour et de naïveté touchante, de cabotinages et de décalage.
Avec Le Partage Des Griefs, l’artiste tourne la page, chargeant ses compositions de fragilité et de tristesse, de mélancolie et de souvenirs diffus, sans sombrer dans l’amertume ou la souffrance, livrant une partie plus intime de lui, révélant les écorchures et les blessures d’une vie à se donner par morceaux.
Les huit titres sont l’occasion de pénétrer dans les entrailles de leur auteur, de découvrir les esquisses du monde virevoltant et torsadé de son esprit, de ressentir par bribes les pulsations de sa personnalité. On y croise les déviances de The Residents et la complexité de la musique baroque, les aléas des musiques expérimentales et les dérives du psychédélisme, l’humour existentialiste et la poésie Dadaïste. Un album chargé d’émotions et d’histoire(s), de vécu et de devenir. Superbe.
Roland Torres -
silenceandsound.me
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Yan Hart-Lemonnier‘s second release for Adaadat pretty much lives up to its title. Le Partage Des Griefs translates as ‘the sharing of grievances’ and there is something of a relentless kind of grief-stricken melancholy that infects the synthetic sounds unleashed here.
Opener “À Quoi Vous Servait L’Espoir De Toute Façon” emerges from the speakers aching and full of effort. It doesn’t feel rough or spiky, just tired. listless and fatigued. The lunging synths sound ground down on “Baphomet Beach Club” and lay a gloomy backdrop for the sea of found sounds and extracted snippets that scamper and stray in the foreground. They snap on the heels of the synths, frustrated and restless, and set up the eternal dichotomy that runs through the album.
A grand drone scours the earth, clearing all memory of what came before, sweeping gently, undulating and pervasive. It is more of a removal of memory, trying to make good the melancholy that has come before and treads a fine line between experimental soundscape and emotional resonance. Pieces hover into view, expelled from somewhere unknown and certainly with no real precedent.
The divergence between the lovely keyboard refrain and the scrapes and squawks of lonely creatures that it frames itself is the perfect expression of how this album operates. They seem to force their presence on the title track, and there is something about it this alchemical transaction that evokes an image of Yan, a monochrome still-life, head bowed over esoteric instrumentation, concentrating on teasing out these exotic yet lonesome soundscapes like an abandoned one-man Radiophonic Workshop working on a forgotten soundtrack that will never see the light of day.
The album artwork captures the search for the macroscopic and the microscopic in the world of sound. Elements are smashed together like some sort of musical Hadron Collider or distant sparks of comet-like brilliance interfering with dusty flickers of sonic detritus hurtling earthwards. The sounds can be awkward, and at times I am assailed by some distant image of a kind of musical Dr Moreau stitching dark, uncomfortable waltz-like shuffles with the natural beating of insect wings. Yan is fabricating soundscapes that won’t exist anywhere else, disappearing down a trail-less path of his own invention, transplanting hints of analogue warmth onto some desiccated nostalgic future. The drones the are employed have a way of extracting you from the day to day, and dropping you into some airless place, serene but discomforting.
Curiously, on final track “Tout Le Monde Sait Mieux Que Toi”, there is an attempt to banish all that went before. It is an hypnotic beat-driven chimera that intrigues as much as it surprises, ending the journey in an unexpected way that is part a relief, but is also like a step back into the real world; the world of rhythm and order that was slowly being eroded. It taunts the listener into replaying the record, just to ensure that what you have just enjoyed really did happen.
Mr. Olivetti -
freq.org.uk
