Heyyyyyyy, would you look at that. Laurent Colson made an album where I can actually understand the vocals rather than being a digital collection of altered auditory noises coming from a digitally processed avatar. That might not mean anything to a lot of people but it does mean something to me. I’ve been following Colson’s work for a little bit of time now (older reviews of his previous album unavailable at the time due to the previous site imploding) and my last dance with him occurred in 2023 on his album “Invisible”. Overall, I really enjoyed it but the programmed voice that he used in conjunction with his witch house sound wasn’t the best. But this time he created a voice that sings lyrics which is quite impressive considering that he refused the help of AI in this endeavor.
The first song on the album ‘Quantum Loop: Iteration 2’ gives us a taste of Colson’s signature cinematic ethereal witch house music alongside this new, fully programmed voice. And it’s fucking great, to be honest. The Voice, I’ll call it that through the rest of the review, goes between spoken word bouts and all out singing. I wouldn’t have guessed that the spoken word part was programmed, or that it wasn’t AI, as it sounds completely human. When the singing comes on there are digital touches to it, but no more than you see from other bands within the electronic field. Not only that, but Colson’s witch house flavoring has never been crisper than here and now. Deep bass, emotional beats, so on and so forth.
Another one of my formal complaints on Colson’s previous album was the lack of unique tracks; I felt like there was fat still left on the meat that wasn’t trimmed before smoking. I don’t have that problem this time. He’s skillful with his track placement. Four witch house-based tracks start the album and then they’re separated by the ‘Forgotten Transmission’ track. And this continues throughout the album with the ‘Forgotten Transmission’ tracks serving as life injectors. It’s never too much of one thing; its always moving at a reasonable pace. Before you know it, you’re sucked into the album for good and you can’t pull out.
The last of my complaints that I had with Colson’s previous production were the song lengths. At some points I felt as if Colson’s music ran out of steam but he kept going with it; there’s none of this on the album. Take, for example, ‘Forgotten Transmission: Alternate Universe 2o2A’. This track is a little over seven minutes long. It begins with ambiance and xylophone curiosities as The Voice gives off robotic like statistics for a spacecraft. After around two-minutes of crawling tension, its broken by angelic synths and singing. A minute-and-forty odd seconds later and laser like synths breathe life back into the song, bringing us through a wormhole, and bringing about silence once more. Then a swift ram of tension before raw drums kick in and a full song comes out of it. The last couple of seconds are spent fading out. This did not make me bored, but curious as to where exactly Colson was going with the song and I never ran out of patience with it.
Colson flourishes through genres throughout the album as indicated by songs such as ‘Forgotten Transmission: Alternate Universe 2oi9’. The bassline on that track is flat out inspired by industrial mechanics and I won’t hear anything else. Something that wouldn’t sound out of place in one of MVTANT’s gorgeously crafted raw tracks. And this fusion of the raw with the mastered is quite beautiful. I suppose it also reflects a theme of the album which is love crossing boundaries, from one universe to the next. Or at least that’s what I expect it to be about, and if it isn’t, that’s what I got out of it and I’m sticking with it.
Another fine example of this fusion is on ‘Quantum Loop: Iteraiton 1’. Though not as shocking Colson plays with ambiance, specifically along the lines of space ambiance, as drones reign supreme in the background with all the electronic drippings you would expect from it. This brings me to sci-fi movies the likes of Interstellar, where a larger than life journey is about to take place. And that sort of cinematic tension is rare to come across in albums.
Laurent Colson has simply outdone himself on ‘Quantum Loop’. Every single critique that I had of his previous work has been addressed through sheer hard work. The Voice is rendered beautifully and I had a hard time imagining that it wasn’t real, rather a digital construct that is beyond this realm. The song lengths are stellar with enough transitions to feed me the entire team. Each track being unique is incredible and tells me how much blood, sweat, and tears went into this album. Lastly, Colson expertly mixed and mastered the album.
Simply put this is one of the best witch house albums I have ever listened to that defies the odds. It’s crisp, it’s smooth, it’s emotional, it take you on a journey and never lets go. It’s relaxes me and, at the same time, puts me in a jolly state. It’s an album I smiled through from start to finish and it’s hard for me to put it down. I’d even go so far as to say that this is one of the best albums I’ve listened to in my entire life, the goosebumps crawling on my skin let me know that. This will easily go into my year-end list and, honestly, it’s going to be hard for Colson to top this in the future. Well done.
