Montag
Alone Not Alone
Gooom/Carpark

The man behind Montag, Montreal's Antoine Bedard, has been pretty damn busy. He's recently toured Canada and France, composed string-arrangements and violin for labelmate M83, and created this new LP. Read this short interview with him in the Montreal Mirror.

Alone Not Alone shines organically. The drum programming sounds real good, very clear with punchy drums. The rhythms are neat, up-beat, and jazz-esque, somewhat influenced by Morr music perhaps? Antoine and partner Ariel's dialogues never extend to the chessy or campy realm, which is hard to avoid sometimes with male/female dialogues in song. The dialogues and vocals are found buried some times and high in the mix at others. Production on Alone Not Alone is very crisp and clear. The production in fact is a big part of what carries this record for me. The songs are well written, but unfortunately some of the vocal melodies seem tacked on, rather than sculpted around. I am overall very fond of Antoine's sense of melody, however. And Ariel's voice carries melody extremely well. They both have very nice voices. There are many buried sounds in this album that are extremely interesting. You might want to listen to it in headphones. On average the songs on this album are short, which is nice because some of these tunes could get a bit trying at any more than four minutes.

The 17 samples that Antoine took at the conservatory really worked out well. They provide that aforementioned organic sound. Most of the time this album succeeds very well in lifting you up. The sounds are all very nice. The samplework is superb. Sounds of Clarinet and Trombone are everywhere on this album, marking it very original in this electro-pop vain. Alone Not Alone strikes me as a very intellige nt album, able to weave a patchwork of samples and field recordings into songs in a deeply affective way. It seems almost a younger brother of Tomlab's Books album: Electronic pop with a tinge of experimentalism and found sound. It's not a party electronic record, but one that will stick with you. Best in headphones and at peaceful times, Alone Not Alone is a very compelling sophomore album from this Gooom Disques fellow and his counterpart Ariel.

Copyright © 2005 Eugene Ward