Play “Embers”
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It’s all in the wires. Praveen Sharma and Thomas Meluch (aka Benoît Pioulard) have met only a handful of times and have never resided in the same city, but over the course of two-plus years they have been quietly assembling Songs Spun Simla, a brief but luminescent collection of pieces driven by Praveen’s inventive arrangements and Benoît’s lush vocal harmonizing. Praveen released his remarkable debut Backed by Spirits on the now-defunct Neo Ouija imprint just as Benoît emerged with the Enge EP on Michigan’s Moodgadget label in early 2005. Through mutual contacts they found that each was an admirer of the other’s work, and the seeds for a casual collaboration were sown. Not long after, Praveen returned from a profound journey through his family’s native India with a minidisk full of field recordings and voices, forming the basis of opener “The Tunnel is Still There”. As he continued creating new songs with an ever-expanding palette of instruments and digital effects, Benoît arranged lyrics and harmonies, driven by the unfamiliarity and excitement of the process. Various ideas arose concerning the fate of these works, but once a record’s worth had been amassed, their friends at Music Related expressed interest in a proper release. Songs Spun Simla is named in honor of the village in India from which Praveen’s family originates – it’s inseparable from his musical inspirations yet still distant and shaped largely by memory. His compostions exist on a fitting scale, then; from the stunning, expansive lead-in of “Death as a Man” to the incredibly detailed percussion of “To Scale”, there’s a sense of worldliness, history and nostalgia placed in a crucible with technology and innovation. Much like a travelogue, the six movements of Songs Spun Simla abut soaring highs with passages of quiet, intimate beauty to create a deeply affecting whole.
Press:
Xlr8r: on Embers Mp3 (9/10)
It’s surprising that songwriters Praveen Sharma and Benoît Pioulard have only met a few times, because tracks on the forthcoming Songs Spun Simla sound as though they’ve spent the last two years in the same room arranging the musical pieces of each song. In fact, the two found one another mutually, and after Praveen returned from a trip to India, began collaborating on tracks that eventually became Songs. The lush, dense instrumentals and digital effects on the album are the work of Praveen, while Pioulard was at the helm of all things voice-related, weaving layered vocal harmonies throughout the music in chillingly pretty patterns.
Boomkat.com:
This release came about after Kranky’s Benoit Pioulard hooked up with Neo Oija graduate Praveen Sharma. Despite the electronic credentials the two artists share, there’s a pronounced emphasis on the art of songwriting here, with ‘To Scale’ combining live kit drums with deep-set, downbeat electronic melodies in a fashion that’s reminiscent of Dictaphone, while immediately after, ‘Embers’ could be a Beirut track scrambled by a Max/MSP patch. Then, following the droning warmth of ‘1991′, the EP comes to a dramatic ending with ‘Chiaroscuro’, which blends Fennesz-like guitar sculpting with wild, overdriven drums, building up to a noisy crescendo. A great combination of off-kilter vocals and roughly shaped instrumentals, Songs Spun Simla transcends the sum of its parts thanks to an intelligent and emotionally engaging use of electronic treatments and subtle sound-warping effects. Highly Recommended.
Othermusic.com downloads:
Benoit Pioulard & Praveen Sharma’s “Songs Spun Simla” on Music Related (home of excellent Shugo Tokumaru, Marxy, Aus, and ST releases) is a fantastic piece of electronic composition, where the tracks vary from organic, downbeat electronica to processed, Fennesz-like guitar-scapes. What really makes it stand out is Pioulard’s gorgeous vocal harmonizing, which sends “Songs Spun Simla” straight to the very top of the electronica heap.
Gorilla vs. Bear:
I don’t know anything about this collaboration between Benoit Pioulard + Praveen Sharma, but based on this first song to emerge from the record — and the fact that I loved Pioulard’s last effort — I should probably look into it.
yesyesyall.com: track of the day
