4 out of 5

Label: Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi

Produced by: Brice Kartmann (?)

I swear I’m actually not that big into straight up experimental music, and I don’t know if I can recall how the Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi label – a very, very experimental one, and pretty French about it, to boot – got on my radar, but here I am, gobbling up new releases from UJNSQ as soon as they’re announced, and endlessly surprised by how often I enjoy them to the moon and back. Rarely this stuff will err into art-for-art’s-sake stuff, and sometimes it’s very French (which, as a cornfed American, has some kind of connotation that suggests highfalutin’ something or other), but even when those aspects are present, I can generally still sense the driving force of those behind the label that keeps giving me such interesting, amazing listening material. This is all absolutely still pretty out there stuff – homegrown instruments; freeform playing – but UJNSQ’s curators seem to share my ears, wanting artists who will mold that out there stuff with some melody.

Brice Kartmann is a mainstay on the label, often appearing in a technical capacity across a ton of releases. Finally going solo, I had my typical UJNSQ experience of reading the album description – “Field recordings … and sounds derived from sound synthesis” – and kind of rolled of eyes, but then once I hit play and (after a quiet intro) things got going, I was transported. I love this stuff.

Totem flotté, translated as ‘Floating Totem’ by the internet, is accurately described above: Kartmann blends clicks of the outdoors and distant ambience with mechanical / digital beats and keys, sometimes somewhat randomly ticking away in an electronic take on Storm & Stress; sometimes more rhythmic, a la Pierre Bastien; sometimes even approach a kind of glitchy IDM-esque beat. There’s not exactly a thread of melody, and there is a tonal thread that helps link the album together, growing from an ethereal opener to kind of more structure and slightly aggressive beats until the album’s middle, then winding back down to the closers, which lean more on field recordings. That said, the copy states that the album “does not tell a story,” and I do agree with that, which is maybe what holds it back some. It’s sequenced, but there’s a kind of emptiness to the experience, which is immersive in its own way – I “feel” colors, and forms, though no solid imagery or emotions – but makes it kind of ephemeral. I link that to the album title, though, where we might attach meaning to something that’s temporary, as it floats by us on a windy stream littered with nature’s detritus.

Gorgeous, weird, entrancing – I do think Bastien is the closest cousin in terms of the style of music, but Totem flotté is very much its own thing, and I love Kartmann and UJNSQ for bringing that thing into my world.