Press & Broadcast

“Auteyn is a new project from French composer / performer Benoît Lefèvre, attempting to find “unity in the diversity of his musical experiences”. The astonishing first product of that search is Vigiles, a five-movement work melding acoustic, vocal and electronic elements into a highly allusive, immersive soundworld. The introduction to this is ‘Conduit’, where a dark, heavily reverberant descending 3-note phrase – pregnant, noirish, possibly nightmarish – repeats like a foghorn on some black abyssal plane. Becoming more melodic, each gradual step forward is encrusted with grit and dust, touched by wisps of light, air and friction. This is extended in ‘Effraie’, where percussion strikes, scuffling noise, inscrutable rumble and various forms of hiss form the backdrop to something akin to an arcane act of spellcasting, filling the space with impossible, unfathomable, semi-imaginary shapes. They form a weird floating harmony, within which a dirty bass clarinet dances.

‘Vigiles’ introduces voices, finally providing a literal mouthpiece to the preceding, possibly preparatory actions. What they sing is impossible to make out but, interspersed with string passages, the tone is elevated, glowing with adoration, building to a shining climax. ‘Déserts’ switches attention to an organ, its steady, bright material accompanied by drones and other sympathetic pitch elements in a warm soup that undergoes a lovely rich swell, before dying back into mysterious scratching noise. The work’s conclusion, ‘Fanfare’, appears at first to be an act of simplicity, but its combination of harmonium and brass forms a rich tapestry of movement that, having appeared to end, looms massively, becoming like something ancient moving with majesty and gravitas, surrounded by a stunningly gorgeous corona of sheer coruscating ecstasy.”

Simon Cummings

5 against 4 - Best of 2022 - #6

31 December 2022