Melodium: "I Am Epsilon"

“Abandon Building Records is a command to shun scenes, bust genres, and constantly push the known dimensions of sound.” Unsurprisingly they’re also French, and have just pushed the known dimensions by signing fellow countryman Melodium. Laurent Girard has been busting genres a little longer than his new mother imprint (he came to the fore in 2001 with a faulty piano and his QuietNoiseArea album), but now he’s ready to play his keys to new listeners; ones who know that, while not exactly smashing boundaries, a gentle, vinyl-crackled swipe at “Slow Show” by the National is precisely the tonic they’ve been longing for. “I Am Epsilon” is therefore not conceptual nor really a command to start shunning scenes. It’s isn’t mischievous. It isn’t an epsilon. And it certainly isn’t a Will Smith survival spoof.

What it is, however, is the ideal primer for Melodium’s new record Coloribus: his seventeenth collection of instrumental clips that pits him against a piano and some rotted recording equipment. If you’ve got an ambient CD liberated from an ex but not enough patience to endure it, you should batch-test music like Girard’s, and “I Am Epsilon” with its limping chords could be the first best place to dive into. Like a Clint Mansell score with extra snare drums, “Epsilon” carefully gathers its four piano lines and gently rattles them like dice. The result is that the melody clicks and flutters, but not enough to distract you from Girard’s playing as he brings in more hands and an extra piano. The dubbed warbling effects let the grace and ghostliness level off and give “Epsilon” a beauty of its own. You won’t find yourself waiting for Matt Berninger to start mumbling, but you may feel it’s well past time the Third Eye Foundation made a sepia film.