For his first solo release as Courant Zero, Montréal-based Maxime Corbeil-Perron has tapped deeply into a wealth of cinematic long-form sound exploration that finds him weaving textural space-laden soundscapes from varied electronic means to concoct a series of pieces that describe journeys of vast distances, but experienced from some sense of womb-like calm.
Beatless, Solari opens with echoing swathes of textured drone that, along with cymbals, wash across the walls of a unexplored room, endless vistas unfolding through deep-tinted windows. The feeling of distance is inescapable, with light sounds drifting into darkness like a meteor shower set to sound.
The progression of the album is stately, with sections appearing to open doors to further unexplored chambers giddying in their vastness. You can sense the echoes drop and return as seahorse synths reflect a stillness that is at odds with the motion beyond. Distorted dream bubbles explore the vast depths of oceans, as if the ideas of outer and inner space are but one and the same thing so, although there is a feeling of graceful progress, it is tempered by the feeling of calm and tranquillity.
Textural details float past like space debris, as if as we move through states; so particles are hitting the walls, but never are we in any danger. Some pieces are texturally busier, with a detuned radio fighting for airwaves against depth charge detonations; they give way to claustrophobic rhythmic progress that when electrified becomes more insistent.
When the heart of the album arrives, all tension drops away as a wavering piano picks its route. Although the tension has dissipated, there is still some background impetus that won’t quite settle and that is definitely scattered when a shuffling trippy rhythm kicks in. It changes things, making them shiny and glistening as if emerging from a soundbath.
There is an impressionistic futurism at play here that drifts in and out of formlessness, while a machine-gun drum pattern is a shockingly rude awakening that briefly bursts the somnolent atmosphere with the kaleidoscopic pattern of sounds emerging from within.
A church-like ambient peace enfolds for the final section, its arpeggiated drift highlighting the paradox of light and dark that has come before; and sending us further, rudderless and out of sight.
-Mr Olivetti-
