We might be as defined by our ignorance as much as anything else, but that’s probably no reason to be all that proud of our historically unending snubbery of the French. Look, they’re just there, over the water. Stand on your tip-toes, you can very almost see them! Their food’s alright. They invented the restaurant for god’s sake! And stood up to the imperialist Yanks on their bloody march across the globe! But what more do you know of their culture? Name five of their bands or artists. Go on! Erm… Daft Punk, Air, Phoenix… ummm…. Johnny Hallyday!? That’s nearly five. Close. But here thankfully is one new addition to chalk up a complete handful. There, now we can talk with authority.
Here’s a band that are reflective of the aforementioned trio’s sensibility and discipline, but avoid any direct comparisons at all. Here’s a band that don’t waste one second or fragment thereof when the microphones are turned on, and hooked up through a tingling array of effects. Here’s a band that believe in fermentation rather than haste (again, they are French), whose tracks seem like twinkling galaxies with their own gravitational pull. Here is one fully realised ideal.
It is music that seeps into your consciousness, that sees unfolding expanses of time not as a luxury but as a necessity. It actually has more in common with the crisp technology-kissed textures of Scandinavian shimmer-pop engineers the Radio Dept, or the detached observation of Sigur Ros, rather than any of their countrymen. It’s kind of cold to the touch but inherently warming, nourishing. Dreamlike landscapes drawn with bold lines from a sharp nib, the kind of thing that The Album Leaf can do especially well.
Previous single ‘Sunny Morning’ is a masterclass in slow-pulse psychedelia, washes of sound like a digitised Galaxie 500, ambient Boards Of Canada terraforming, building into a careful mid period Mogwai climax. The title track has the intense sound of those first exciting UNKLE recordings were they manipulating, say, Portishead. ‘In Union With…’ sounds like a church organ with a virus, unnerving and discordant yet peculiarly uplifting, ‘Recurring’ is a lightly-trodden and haunting hymnal folk song mesmerized by unexplained lights in the sky, and ‘Somewhere In The Light’ showcases Cyann’s beautiful voice, a passionate thing of Regina Spektor or Carina Round proportions, on a bed of steady, reassuring piano. Styles drift into and out of one another, but if they differ they do so gradually, there are no undue clashes. If they’ve not put France on the map then they’ve created one all of their own, with havens, but without borders.