2 out of 5

Label: Discrepant

Produced by: Anne Taegert (mastered by)

I appreciate that Pierre Bastien has both stuck to his mechanoid concepts and allowed himself to step outside of the automaton limitation / framework over the years, enhancing his core tick-tock machine sounds with instrumentation and samples. Sonic Folkways has further interesting expressions of that sense of experimentation, but the appeal here feels very limited, lending itself more to a performance art than compositions that beg for relistening.

Out of Folkways’ five songs, I’d say two satisfy the Bastien “sound” I’ve come to enjoy, with the others single layers or starting points that don’t seem to build much beyond that. So I’ll accept that my ears might be the true limitation here, but nonetheless, I was pretty unengaged throughout this, despite giving it several spins and going over speakers or headphones.

Opener Aha!, title and all, puts us in a good place, though, indicating a sense of discovery: Pierre mashing his organic beats with wild, skronky horn lines – and maybe those beats are also constructed of horns? It’s a wild, discordant starter. So it makes sense to pair that with something rather minimal, but the 12-minute Moor’s Room way overcorrects, going down to a slow, heartbeat beat and letting insectoid ambience click through here and there. Music of this nature has its place, but it’s too thin of a concept within the context of the album. The A- and B-side do something similar, ending with a coda: A has Rasta tsar, which is just chill wind instrument-sounding tones for a couple minutes. Again – has its place, but this is a coda to an already quiet track, so it doesn’t do much to change the mood.

Pan’s Nap over on the B-side brings back some of the clatter Bastien executed on his previous Discrepant release, The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien, based around string instrumentation. This is the closest to a “classic” Bastien sound, circling around automatons and riffing atop, changing the source of the riffing in and out. It gets a little tired at 12+ minutes, but it’s a solid listen. The coda on this side, Râ, Jaw ajar, is mostly clicky percussion rumbles, but it has a similar struggle as A’s coda: since the preceding song goes on for too long, this doesn’t do much to pick a listener back up.

Creatives gotta keep moving, and I appreciate that Pierre has done that. Sonic Folkways has some highlights, but it feels more like sound experiments overall than a fully realized release.