Sylvain Chauveau — ultra minimal

Sylvain Chauveau has been captivating audiences with his minimalist compositions for over twenty years; his work sitting confidently alongside luminaries including Philip Glass and Gavin Bryars. Employing acoustic, electronic and vocal sources to create a subtle and searching brand of music, Chauveau’s latest release, ultra minimal shows the French musician testing the limits of his minimalist credentials during a recent live performance at London’s Café Oto - relinquishing all electronic sounds to focus solely on the acoustic.

Chauveau launched his illustrious career back in 2000 with the modern classical electro-acoustic album Le Livre Noir du Capitalisme (currently being reissued on Sonic Pieces) - around the same time that the genre was having a revival thanks to the likes of Jóhann Jóhannsson and Max Richter. Since then, Chauveau has been highly productive, recording for various labels including Sub Rosa and Broccoli and releasing a series of solo albums including How To Live in Small Spaces and Touching Down Lightly. His works have been performed worldwide not just by Chauveau but by pianists including Vanessa Wagner and François Mardirossian. He is also part of ensemble 0 a collective of musicians staging both their own and others works.

But for ultra minimal, Chauveau is left to his own devices - turning his attention to reduction and limitation. Confined to just piano, guitar, harmonium and melodica – all played individually, this is a performance where the music is vehemently stripped down to its bare bones. A mix of both novel compositions and pieces that Chauveau has taken from his back catalogue and rearranged to fit with this current minimalist aesthetic, ultra minimal is to all intents and purposes a new work; so much so in fact that he has even renamed the older tracks.

Chauveau starts as he means to go on, ‘p. N’ introducing some very delicate piano, not melodic as such, but definitely harmonious with Chauveau focussing on single notes played both individually and collectively. ‘mi’ sees Chauveau switching to the guitar. He nurses loops that subtly change form while maintaining a persistent and hypnotic cycle. The next couple of tracks return to the piano, looping and tiptoeing softly; ‘nd’ is particularly intriguing as it glides between the extremes of pitch – top keys and bottom keys negotiated to slightly jarring effect. Composition piece number five, ‘i’ stands out from the rest. A one-line pulsating synth accompanied by barely perceptible background percussive beats. The most abrasive track on the album, it forms an interval between the album’s two halves.

With ‘ho’ we are back to the tranquillity of the piano – single notes play out as once again Chauveau returns to discordantly striking top and bottom notes together, something he also revisits for ‘u’. Two more guitar pieces lead us towards the performance’s denouement. ‘med’ resumes the shifting guitar loops, while ‘deu’ sounds improvised - a musician at work in front of an audience. For the finale, the synth re-enters for one last time propelling us out of our melancholic torpor as Chauveau brings this mesmerising performance to a close.

Compelling. ultra minimal displays Chauveau’s knack for both invention and creativity; available here.