2 out of 5

Label: Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

Produced by: Yan Hart-Lemonnier

Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi is definitely one of the more experimental labels I collect. As such, I allow for some… wiggle room. I mean, that comes with label collecting to an extent (I love my labels, but of course, I’m not gonna love everything they release), but when you’re dealing with “art” – which UJNSQ does – you’re very likely running in to stuff that veers far from being “music.” Antoine Bellanger’s Le Jardin Perdu / Talweg doesn’t veer completely away from that – maybe excepting the 30-minute straight-up field recording of walking through leaves that closes it out – but when you read that the tracks on the A-side (“Le Jardin Perdu”) were originally released as “ceramic jewelry containing USB keys, produced in 10 copies,” you get an idea of the type of stuff we’re dealing with. Still, why I stick with UJNSQ (and other labels) is because there’s a mindset there that I appreciate, and that allows me an ‘in’ to projects I might not otherwise listen to; I give time to things that I would’ve passed up, and I find something I dig.

But Bellanger’s work here isn’t quite enough for me. I suppose if I was more into field recordings, which form the base of this, I’d be more favorable; I do like the concept, which finds Bellanger recording outside and atmospheric sounds on an old cassette tape, then pasting it into digital productions alongside a recorded (and digitized) ocarina, resulting in cut up and manipulated blends of these sounds. However, the result is neither minimal enough or perhaps weird enough to grab me.

Bellanger pairs his sounds (which are often tape loops with airy ocarina notes) with his sing-song vocals, and here again, there’s a caveat – I don’t speak French. So maybe there’s something that the language would add that would help. The tone of the presentation is pretty simplistic, though, with repeated phrases, adding to the art vibe – it comes across kind of as short poems, set to nature music. And that’s not my bag.

Here and there, though, Bellanger adds some more notable electronics – some noise; layered vocals – and a drum beat on two tracks, which I’ll cop to totally digging, but I recognize those are the ‘easy’ ones. Elsewise, I just wish there was ‘more’ of any given thing: more focus on the atmosphere; more noise; more fleshing out of these as ‘songs.’

But, y’know, it’s art.