MonoLogue - The Sea From The Trees

Marie e le Rose, as she describes herself, is a sound artist who has been surrounded by music her whole life thanks to her family. Throughout her childhood and teenage years, she developed a knack for playing instruments, including the guitar, bass, piano, drums, flute, and many, many more. It wasn't until a few years ago that she had an urge to dive into electronic music, discovering artists such as : Berio, Maderna, Nono, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Terry Reilly, etc.

It was around then that she decided to learn how to use machines and computers to produce and modify sound, which has pretty much led up to this point. MonoLogue is another one of her side projects, but one that is much more sweet and melodic in comparison to her other work. And, through Chemical Tapes, she has released her latest album titled The Sea From The Trees.

The album itself is built from natural ambient sounds, including the swishing of winds through trees and the absolute calming sound of the sea and other bodies of water. And, the result of all these cumulative sounds passing through standard instrumental work and other analogue sounds is a strict ambient sound collage.

The track titles themselves don't necessarily have any creative names to them, as the three A-side tracks are just labeled A1, A2, and A3, and the first B-side track is called B1. However, at least the second B-side track does have the title of Indya (Caesure, which provides a little variety.

But, titles or not, the musical appeal is what really counts right now. I would say that the first track is decent, although the first two minutes are a bit of a drag to get through as the static effects and looming drone just doesn't do much for the aural senses. However, as the song goes on and more and more varied and slight noises are added in, the track gets much more interesting.

However, A2 provides a better appeal with wind-like sounds breezing through the atmospheric build, whilst piano plays over it all. Though it does loop, vocal samples are added in that sound like they were sung by a church choir. The oddly glitchy tendency for the vocals to fade in and out were quite disturbing. But in a good manner.

Field samples play a major role in the intro and body of A3, cracking out a wonderfully built song that spans eleven minutes. Again, a quiet chill reeked across my body as this song went on, but it was more or less a loving cold touch than a hateful one. B1 didn't quite impress me as much as the other songs. It wasn't because it necessarily presented more of the same, but I just couldn't really shut my eyes and appreciate it as much as the other songs. Perhaps the dulling drone sound that I've heard in one too many other songs similar to this was the root cause of it. And, lastly, Indya (Caesura) was a brilliant electronically pieced together song that sounded as if robots with broken circuits were trying to communicate with each other as best they could. It was a change pace, and one that was well needed.

But, though there were some problems to be found on this album, I think I was still able to sit down and enjoy at least three of the tracks completely. But, the other two are still there, and it's never good when I'm willing to skip over two tracks without remorse. Still, the rest were well done, especially Indya (Caesura), so be sure to go ahead and check that out. Mar 10 2015