The EP is an overlooked art form. How many perfect EPs can you think of off the top of your head? French multi-instrumentalist Olivier Alary proves that an EP can be every bit as interesting as an album with Disown, Delete, his debut single for FatCat.
Packed into the twenty-minute EP is an amazingly haunting layer cake of sound tones, dense atmospherics and intriguing song structures. Kicking things off with the title track, Alary twists gentle guitars and corroding atonal drones amongst guest vocalist Chan Marshall's Southern Comfort vocal delivery. Two similarly dense songs make up the meat of the EP: the equally engaging "Carmine" and the breathtakingly gorgeous "Their Lines." Most artists would kill to have album content half as good as this, Alary's scraps.
Concluding the experience is the ever-brilliant Tim Hecker's take on the sounds given to him to manipulate. He bends, twists and evaporates the original to a degree where you can barely decipher anything from the title cut. Is that Marshall? Where did she go? Disown, Delete is pure arrangement madness -- a tantalizing taste test for those wishing to dive fully into Ensemble, and some of the best evidence of the art of the EP that I've ever heard.
***
Discuss this review at The Prefix Message Board
Artist (streaming audio): http://www.ensemble-home.com/
Label: http://www.fat-cat.co.uk
Ensemble »
