Micro:Mega
Photosphere
Noise Museum

It is difficult to compare Micro:Mega to a certain kind of music. Not especially for me, an ordinary listener, but also for the records salesmen: now post-rock, and more precisely anti-pop, now new electronica, now techno. In any case, the specialised press can not help me, because it is extremely unusual to find some information about this band. So, it is necessary to let us be guided by the sounds of this record, which becomes increasingly interesting with time ...

The band is, in fact, a duo made up by Frédéric Luneau (sample, guitar, voice (?), flute) and Sylvain Chauveau (keyboard, guitar, voice (?)), who are natives of the south-west of France. Generally speaking, the music of Micro:Mega is essentially instrumental, with some atmospheric long tracks, on which the samples and the ethnic influences are in perfect harmony with some more classical tones composed by the keyboards and the stripped guitars. The melancholy perfectly cohabits with the beauty.

To begin with, this first (I think) album, we are thrown into the 80's, by the bass on Invisible Hand, surrounded by a more distant organ. Then, we continue with a crystal-clear guitar close to breaking off (Dune). Soothing to the mind, but shivering comes after, in particular with A Sea Of Styrofoam and Out Pouring Of The Soul, an invitation to travel into the planet Micro:Mega, filled by some old analog keyboards, where the mind of Brian Eno prowls, or perhaps the mythical band Legendary Pink Dots, though without the charisma of the prophet Edward Ka-spel.

The next songs bring us back to the opening bliss, with a feeling of travelling, left free to imagine and interpret the images that arises when listening to this music: A quiet but suffocating desert? Worrying abysses with soothing darkness? Nothing but paradoxes ... The last tracks accompany the arrival of the twilight (The Man Who Never Existed, Rumour & Wall), just disturbed by the loops of violins on Because My Flesh Is Yours.

Finally, this is simple, but not simplistic music, obviously recorded with few means, but the result are 11 tracks with a sumptuous mix of sounds, reminiscent of the French band Hint, however not as violent. But this is not the aim of Micro:Mega. Soothing, soothing ...

Copyright © 1999 Patrick Dubail