AETHERLONE

Français :

Aetherlone est le projet et l’oeuvre de Sebastian Müller-Thür qui n’en est pas à son premier coup d’essai. Ce jeune parisien multi-instrumentiste et ingénieur du son poursuit avec ce projet une recherche de long terme, avec ses protocoles d’expérience et ses étapes témoins, prenant aujourd’hui sa forme pleine et mesurable. Au milieu des années 1990, époque où il arrive sur la scène parisienne (celle du fameux squat l’Hôpital éphémère), l’effervescence est au mélange des genres. Tout le monde tourne alors les yeux vers la ville de Bristol avec Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, tandis qu’il officie aux platines et au sampler de plusieurs groupes, aiguisant ses talents de DJ et d’arrangeur/producteur avec d’ores et déjà un sentiment d’urgence : « d’écrire la musique ». 

Il prendra donc vite ses distances avec l’évidence d’une musique « ouverte à toutes les influences », pour dessiner plutôt son propre territoire, quelque part où sa formation de plasticien et son goût pour l’art minimal (Richard Serra, Donald Judd, Barnett Newman) pourraient interagir avec ses conceptions musicales héritées du Free Jazz de John Coltrane, comme de la New Wave et de groupes tels Talk Talk et son chanteur Mark Hollis, ainsi que des fractures d’un Sonic Youth ou du Tabula Rasa d’Arvo Pärt.

Suite à une période riche en expériences scéniques (Divan du Monde, Espace Confluences, Glaz’art , Flèche d’Or), il se concentre sur la définition d’un langage musical qui lui sera propre. Pour le projet Aether, fondé au début des années 2000, notre multi-instrumentiste s’entoure de nombreux musiciens et chanteurs, contribuant à la polymorphie du paysage musical né dans son laboratoire. Un subtil agencement de beats électroniques et de musique ambient, où la recherche sonore, très fouillée, laisse déjà apparaître, en creux, le désir d’une écriture plus dépouillée. Les structures des morceaux sont en forme de labyrinthes extatiques, des susurrements de voix et des vocalises lyriques se disputent sur un ciel troublé de basses jamaïcaines et de synthétiseurs futuristes. Le premier LP d’Aether sobrement intitulé Se perdre : contre, qui sort en 2005 sur Ethylen Records – label qu’il fonde lui-même en 2002 - avec quelques collaborateurs – recevra un bel écho chez la critique. 

L’année 2006 sera plutôt consacrée à la production et au travail de studio, auprès d’autres groupes très prometteurs comme Mina May. Concentré derrière la table de mixage, il prend une dernière phase de recul. Ses vœux d’indépendance et de radicalité, en tant que musicien, vont se retrouver dans sa musique elle-même. Nourri par une retraite solitaire de deux ans, où il compose les morceaux du projet renommé Aetherlone, il re-déplace son regard vers le centre du territoire qu’il a dessiné jusqu’alors. Il se met à chanter de sa propre voix, qui devient l’aiguillon-sismographe de son monde flottant; l’auditeur est souvent surpris que la mélodie se décuple subrepticement en nappes cycloniques, rappelant les affinités de l’auteur avec la musique sérielle d’un Philip Glass ou d’Autechre. Pourtant la part de l’électronique diminue au profit de l’organique. La plupart des compositions sont construites  autour de guitares électriques hypnotiques et vagabondes (“Here and Now”), de pianos en suspension (“Carnival”) et sons de claviers cabossés (“The Unemployed Soulhunter”), avec cette voix écorchée qui trouve, dans ce songwriting lumineux, un équilibre fragile mais précieux.

La  musique d’Aetherlone passe ainsi  de l’électro brumeuse et hétéroclite à un folk acide et illuminé, anachronique et cérémonial, qui doit autant à Robert Wyatt qu’à Michael Gira. Procédant par échos, reflets et ombres, son esthétique de la ritournelle et de l’errance trouve enfin une issue discographique, avec un album sortant en Septembre 2012, co-réalisé par Jean-Charles Versari (Les Hurleurs - Jason Edwards).

English:

Aetherlone is the project and the work of Sebastian Müller-Thür who is everything but a newcomer. It is the culmination of a musical journey undertaken by a young multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer from Paris, which took him through several stages of experimentation and as many breakthroughs, which Aetherlone both mirrors and bears witness to.

Mixing musical genres and inspirations was the flavor of the day when he first appeared on the thriving Parisian scene as a member of the influential Hotel Ephemere squat in the mid 90s,. At a time when Bristol, the city where bands like Portishead, Tricky or Massive Attack were defining the future of music, was the place to be, he started honing his craft as a DJ, producer and arranger in several outfits. It gave him the opportunity to let his skills at turntablism and sampling shine through, driven by the same essential urge: “to write (the) music’

Realizing that writing and making a ‘music that was drawing from all kind of influences’ was slightly too comfortable and not altogeher satisfactory, he took to defining the outlines of his own musical world. In this world, his education as a plastician, his taste for minimalistic art (that of such artists as Richard Serra, Donald Judd or Barnett Newman) was to suffuse a vision of a music inherited from and paying tribute to Free Jazz and John Coltrane, British New Wave as played by such acts as Talk Talk and their mastermind, singer-songwriter Mark Hollis, and also rooted in Sonic Youth’s noisy art rock.and Arvo Part’s Tabula Rasa.

After having seized all opportunities to perform live with several line ups in such prestigious and influential venues as The Divan Du Monde, the Espace Confluences, Glaz’Art or the Flèche d’or, he dedicated himself to shaping a musical language that he could claim his very own. In the very early 2000s, the multi-instrumentalist started playing under the Aether monicker, with many guest musicians and singers that helped him to bring even more variety and depth to the musical language he had been crafting and perfecting on his own. His yearning for a stripped-to-the-bone songwriting was already blatant in his carefully-wrought sonic experiments which deftly interwove ambient music and electronic beats. Upon listening, one is caught in an estatic maze-like world of futuristic keyboards, ominous Jamaican bass lines, whispering voices and lyrical vocal outbursts. Aether’s first LP, the soberly-named Se Perdre: Contre, recorded with the help of a few fellow musicians, was self-released in 2005 on his own label, Ethylen record which he had created in 2002.  

He spent most of 2006 in recording studios, producing and sound engineering for many other up and coming outfits such as Mina May. He took advantage of his work behind the mixing desk to ponder over and outline the boundaries of his own approach to performing and writing songs. His music was bound to stem from his craving for independence as well as from his refusal to give in to any kind of fashion.  He then took some time off the music scene for two years, meanwhile working on his own, and perfecting the songs of his new project, which was now called Aetherlone. His new sound reflects a slight change of focus on the universe he had already carefully shape, and  gives a whole new significance to his voice: it has now become the center of gravitas in a world of shifting sounds. The listener is caught in an ever-changing whirlpool of layers of melodies subtly building up as the songs gather momentum, in tracks reminiscent of Philip Glass’s serial music or of Autechre. 

And yet, his work is now less IDM-orientated than it used to be, most of the tracks being based on mesmerizing and meandering accoustic and electric guitar parts (as in “Here and Now”) on spare piano lines (as in “Carnival”) or on some warbly and far-off keyboard flourishes (“The Unemployed Soulhunter”). But it’s the singer’s heartfelt, lamenting and deeply-affecting vocals that make each song such  a subtle and exquisite gem. They are the backbone of a songwriting which ventures into hazy, dream-like electronica as well as into the lands of a radiant, out-of-time and trance-inducing acid folk which owes as much to Robert Wyatt as to Michael Gira.

At long last, this twilight-like soundscape of melodic echoes and serpentine reflections is to be issued on an album in September 2012, co-produced with the help of Jean Charles Versari (of Les Hurleurs’ and Jason Edwards’ fame).