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Miriodor — Elements
(Cuneiform Rune 498, 2022, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2022-12-26

Elements Cover art

By my calculation, Elements is Miriodor’s twelfth album (counting Tôt Ou Tard, their second, casette-only release) since their 1986 debut, which amounts to about one album every three years on the average. Over the years their style has varied considerably, always keeping the listener guessing as to what they are going to do next. On the six tracks of Elements it seems they are touching on everything they have ever done. Now down to the core trio of Remi Leclerc (drums and electronics), Pascal Globensky (keyboards and piano) and Bernard Falaise (guitars, bass, banjo, keyboards and turntable, now covering for their former bassist Nicolas Lessard who left the group since their 2017 album Signal 9). Each cut tends to stretch out a bit more than on previous recordings, though that doesn’t mean they are wasting any of that time on repetitions; in fact each of these numbers is in a constant state of change, evolving constantly and rarely going back for a second look at anything that’s been done before. As most of Miriodor’s work since the early days, everything herein is instrumental (although some interesting field recorded voices are heard chattering in the background on “Embuscade”), and with that I suppose the result is that any of these numbers takes plenty of time and dedication to get to know well; but that’s a big part of the allure of progressive rock, and something that’s been integral in Miriodor’s approach from the get-go. The opener, “Boomerang,” may be only a little over five minutes in length — the album’s shortest track, in fact — but it’s packed with so many wholesale changes that it seems like it’s double that length, constantly turning and changing directions. With “Poulet-Bicyclette” they provide an excellent dose of the musical humor that they are so well known for, again in a state of constant evolotion as it proceeds. “Tour de Main” begins with a nice groove that the band builds on until that idea collapses and something new begins all over again, and again. It seems that with Elements, Miriodor has assembled everything they do so amazingly well into one concise package, in fact this may well be their best effort to date.

Filed under: New releases, 2022 releases

Related artist(s): Miriodor, Bernard Falaise, Pascal Globensky

More info
http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/elements

 

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