Puce Moment — Epic Ellipses
[Sub Rosa — 2023]★★★★★
Reviewed 10 April 2023by Colin Lang
Within the field of soundtracks, it is stating the obvious but, some music just doesn't need film, or images. Puce Moment is the moniker of just such an enterprise, a duo who create musical accompaniment to a host of projects – dance, films, etc. – but Epic Ellipses, the duo's fourth album, is as autonomous as anything in the experimental electroacoustic, left field grab bag.
The four long tracks that make up this latest offering grow and develop like a virus, moving a step or two ahead of anything that might resemble consciousness. There are the individual sources, for sure, but they hardly account for what comes across as a maelstrom, a living entity the likes of which recall Xenakis' Metastasis (1953-4), an eight-minute beast for 61 musicians written in the city which Puce Moment call home, Paris.
What makes Epic Ellipses truly pathbreaking is that Puce Moment have managed their brand of swarm while sticking to a near-protestant minimalism. So, where does the energy come from? How do such reduced means manage to conjure the specter of a disease that has its own, de-centralized nervous system? By the time we reach "Taifuu", the final and longest of the tracks, the infection remains as their aetiology fades. This is not so much composing as it is stewarding, making sure an entity is allowed to exist in just such a way that it retains its own identity, not as an appendage of some anthropoid, but as pure sound.
For fans of minimalist electroacoustic composition and anyone who is willing to let go and allow the virus do what it wants. To find out more drop in here
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