France Jobin — Valence

France Jobin's "Valence" is another understated lowercase opus from the admirably consistent Line label, specializing in detailed deep listening music which is typically uplifting and relaxing without resorting to any obviousness or cliche.  This album contains 3 tracks, averaging roughly 20 minutes in length.  It was Jobin's debut release in 2012, and she has since released another album this year on Baskaru Records.

The 27 minute opener "S Orbital" begins as a vaporous, ghostly shimmer, faintly cloudlike and empty, with a soft white consonance.  Angelic, misty and aerial chords meander across resonance peaks.  Jobin is occupied finding that sweet spot where the wind sings the purest, loudest tone, creating that saturating, numbing feeling where all other tones are drowned out.  It sounds incredibly distant and remote, and has little warmth; an environment associated with this sound would undoubtedly be very cold.

A tiny yet viscious sharpness of extreme high frequency tones prevents one from turning the volume up too loud.  These emerge and drop out again quite frequently, like pockets of atmospheric interference.  Older listeners may not even be able to hear these, they're at that supersonic level which is almost 'felt' more than heard.  Sometimes, I get the feeling extreme high frequencies are added to avant garde music like this simply because they are used too seldom elsewhere in the music world, and indeed, in the case of this piece, I find myself wondering what they contribute to the feeling of the music, and what relation they are meant to have to the watery melodic swells droning in the backdrop.  Thankfully, they recede into absence for the last several minutes of the piece.

"P Orbital" opens with a piano repeatedly sounding a note in a higher octave, and a major string chord gently swells beneath, not unlike the sound of an orchestra tuning, with different instruments entering and exiting as they choose.  After a few minutes, the chord thins away to nothing, replaced by a soothing sub bass tone, which simmers dimly for many minutes.  From this, a comforting warmth grows, and the music begins to remind me strongly of Devin Townsend's minimal ambient experiment "The Hummer".  This track shares its airy openness with the album's first piece, but has a more welcoming and enveloping softness about it.  Delicate drops of meandering piano re-emerge with a glassy rattle, and the piece ends in a blur of nostalgic chordwork, infused with contentedness and sunshine.  There are a couple hints of high frequency sound, but nothing like the insistent and piercing tones recurring in the first track.  This track represents the Line label at its best.

"D Orbital" is last, and shortest at 18:21.  The dreaded high frequencies open the piece, sounding much as they did in track 1.  Whether for continuity's sake or for some unknown artistic purpose, the shrill digital tones periodically appear throughout the duration of this piece as they did in first piece, decidedely louder than the liquified ambience beneath, sitting firmly atop it.  The hushed beauty of the muted synth chords in the background is something I would very much like to appreciate, but I have an irrefutable physical revulsion to the sounds they are coupled with, and thus have to keep the music at a very quiet volume while listening.  If only these piercing tones were slightly quieter, I would be able to call myself a fan of this track.

The album jacket contains a pretentious description comparing quantum theory and composition.  In my opinion, prospective listeners would be better off not reading it, as I utterly fail to see the parallel Jobin is attempting to describe.  For all her talk of science and mathematics, it is clear to me from the meandering space ambient sound of Jobin's music that it's largely freeform, improvisational at some level, and primarily emotionally driven.

I am all for artists such as Line label owner Richard Chartier or Ryoji Ikeda, who explore the painful, anti-aesthetic lands of extreme high frequencies, but I must admit I find it simply maddening when beautiful, listenable and emotional ambient music is placed inaccessibly beneath such sounds.  For two of the three tracks on "Valence", this is the case, and thus, I can't give the album an overwhelmingly positive rating.  It's a shame, as Jobin clearly has the capability to create lovely and deep soundscapes, as evidenced by the flawless second track, "P Orbital".