- August 31, 2014
from http://www.ambientblog.net/blog/2011-01-02/various-artists-underwater-noises
Strangely enough, both Bruno Dorella of Bar La Muerte and Andrea Marutti of Afe contributed guitar and treatments on”Les Justes” – the long opening track – at an earlier stage when the album was still supposed to be released by another label.
The title of this track, and all the others as well, is a reference to the work of Arthur Rimbaud, the famous and influential french poète maudit.
“À partir est d’ici la seule solution” is a track which includes many of the elements used by Mark Hamn on this release. It begins with a looped woodwind instrument paired with laptop-generated high frequencies; a timpani roll introduces simple but effective guitar melodies and arpeggios accompanied by field recordings of water and rusty gear. The woodwind loop and timpani return in the closing section as a recording of a restless crowd in the distance discloses a sort of discomfort.
“Le besoin de la réflexion” is the shortest track on”Je déchire l’ongle aux criminels”, it features fluid piano patterns finding their way through cinematic pads and various layers of microsounds.
“Malaises douces” begins with what seems to be an highly distorted guitar drone teamed up with digitally manipulated rhytmic noises. Peaceful guitar loops slowly emerge as more and more treated field recordings populate the background.
“La charnière du temps” is a lovely droney number that showcases particularly evocative qualities. It’s a perfect soundtrack to accompany an old Super-8 home movie and the fading colours of what once was youth. For sure it is one of the tracks contained on”Je déchire l’ongle aux criminels” that impressed us the most.
With”Le vent fait un tour en dehors à la notification de moi” we get back into glitcher territories. This track is constructed on all sort of sound scoriae and offers a closer look on the digital side of Mark’s music, so to speak.”Automatism de la dernière heure” is another ambient-oriented composition enriched by rhythmic miniatures, which is a nice ending to a beautiful album of skillfully created sober and heartfelt music.”