[dropcap style=”font-size:100px;color:#992211;”]I[/dropcap]t’s with no small amount of feverish elation that we hear that Benoit Pioulard’s new album is on it’s way.
Here at Trebuchet we were jismatically Pitchfork about Lasted, which rated as one of our very topmost favourites for 2010.
We can’t wait and more news to follow.
Hymnal is the fourth kranky album by Thomas Meluch under his musical alias Benoit Pioulard, following Précis (2006), Temper (2008) and Lasted (2010). It was written and recorded throughout a year spent in southeastern England and on the European mainland, during which the ubiquity of religious iconography and grandiose cathedrals became an unexpected muse.
Raised as a Catholic but never especially pious, Meluch drew on this aspect of social history as the basis for Hymnalʼs 12 chapters. He notes a particular preoccupation with the ways that faith offers a sense of solace and belonging in an existence that inherently provides none, framed in a context of tradition, ritual and the notion of the eternal.
Themes aside, Hymnal contains some of Meluchʼs most expansive instrumental works (“Knell”, “Gospel”) and fully realized pop compositions (“Hawkeye”, “Reliquary”, “Margin”), making for a rich and dynamic long-playing arc. Also featured are string arrangements by Kranky label mate Felix and guitar work from ambient maestro Kyle Bobby Dunn (reviewed here in Trebuchet).
Hymnal will be released on 4 March 2013 will a giveaway track from the album incoming very soon, so stay tuned.
Factoid: The albumʼs cover depicts the dessicated interior of a centuries-old tree on the estate of surrealist Edward James in West Sussex; it was felled be an invasive, parasitic black fungus while still alive and verdant.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
Can’t wait!