February 4, 2010

Music Review: Sylvain Chauveau - Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)


Sylvain Chauveau’s record label – Type - places his music under the vague category of “post-classical". This empty classification, despite essentially explaining nothing about who or what Chaveau is as a musician, seems somehow to illuminate much that lies hidden about his work. Chauveau, a pianist and electronic composer, makes evocative, edgy, heavily ambient music that is to classical what post-punk is to punk and post-rock is to rock. These songs evoke the work of Brian Eno and Philip Glass while also hearkening back to the British Synth-Pop of Depeche Mode. Clocking in at just under thirty three minutes it is better described as an EP of sketches than a full-blown album. This new collection retains the ambience of Chauveau’s previous work but within a more song-structured format. However, don’t expect a verse-chorus pattern, Singular Forms trenchantly remains in the avant-garde camp, committed to the use of negative space, deconstruction and glitch.
(Type)