What you say
No-one has reviewed & by Astrid yet.
What we say
 This record left our Phil feeling ecstatic.
Onto Astrid who have a CD out on French label Arbouse. It's annoyingly
titled "&" which probably wouldn't annoy most folks but try
searching for that title anywhere on the internet and watch the
unrelevant results unfurl before your bloated frustrated eyes.
Fortunately that is where the annoyance ends cos here's a gorgeous
double CD called '&'. This is lush instrumentation featuring
guitars, piano, kalimbo, violin, harmonium, double bass, clarinet and
loads more. Part neo-classical, part folk rock and even part the mellow
end of post rock 2 CD set is really beautiful. Think Rachels, Clogs,
John Fahey, Yann Tiersen, Colleen, Sylvain Chauveau.... Somehow all of
these influences have been shoehorned into one blissfully delicate
emotive album. I don't want to write too much about it as I think it
will spoil the surprise but this is fantastic!!
What the label says:
What is it? The second double album and a wonderful french trio, practicing a kind of folk lunar and film, instrumental and soothed, whose landscapes and climates to draw classiscisme, chamber music and even that of rebirth.
Key tracks? No hit potential here, but a dozen titles wonderful that can evoke for connoisseurs, Mark Hollis, disks at Constellation, John Fahey, Clogs, Town And Country, Sylvain Chauveau or ignored, and Rachel's excellent (with which the group has often played). Astrid excels particularly in the long beaches, patiently constructed, like "Beware…."
Verdict? A total success, between western and medieval folk ballads, and while inviting a wealth of stamps and instruments (dry and electric guitars, rhodes, melodica, harmonium, violin, cello and sound objects), gives pride to silence and meditation.
Group flagship label Arbouse alongside Acetate Zero, Astrïd imagine, from Nantes and Marseille, the safest way to thwart the many pitfalls stylistic post-rock and chamber music. If these influences are well on this enigmatic double album, the trio strives to transcend its origins split between musical improvisation, rock and classical restraint with a daunting. Rather than playing on the eternal couple voltage / remission and other notices winds charges that were eventually make us wonder yawn, Cyril Secq (guitar, the sound objects), Vanina Andréani (cello, harmonium) and Yvan Ros ( drums, percussion) give meaning to a concept too often forgotten: the suspense of a silence that lasts, the indecision of a note which extinguished, the fragility of a vibrant instrument that runs into himself. Without showing any virtuosity tape-l'œil, & gathers valuable qualities of Colleen and incredible Clogs by praising a certain modesty in their abstract drama. Needless to escape heavy artillery to move, only repeated patterns of a delicate piano or touch a guitar barely enough to run our imagination titiller film. No wonder this that Astrïd has already worked in other disciplines such as dance and short films, both his music distills a familiar harmony and sensual as much as a disturbing strangeness. Two hours of total immersion can be long and tedious, but when the audacity seems at this point innate, we can only bow.
Thomas Bartel • • • • ° °
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