jeudi 14 février 2008

AUN on Last-FM


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Mathieu Beauséjour' flyer for the cavernous foundry performance.

CHAIN DLK REVIEWS

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AUN/Blackhorse (oral cd 18) RATED ****.5
With "Blackhorse" Martin Dumais aka AUN shifts into a more dreamy and less experimental form of music. The overall feel is that the composition is more relaxed and AUN varies in its subtle attack with many different strategies ranging from simple but effective lushy drone pieces to more structured tracks with strings and other instruments always flexing and changing. Dumais wrestles with loops and keeps the listener focused for the whole 55 minutes of "Blackhorse". His tunes evoke both post-industrial revolutionaries and modern artists dealing with experimental music. It's not too far-fetched to think of AUN as the modern Canadian equivalent of projects like Zoviet France or Cranioclast. My highest recommendation for this one.
Review by: Andrea Vercesi (CHAIN DLK)

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AUN/MULE (oral cd 15) RATED****
AUN is Martin Dumais (also playing with Les Jardiniers ) - one of the prime movers of the experimental music scene in Montreal - a scene that spawned many talented performers. The music that AUN creates is released via Oral Records, a Canadian label home to projects such as CM Von Hausswolf, Joe Colley and the two superb Monoton re-issues. "Mule" is the first of his works to be published and it can be described as post-ambient with an experimental edge. There's melodies in there too and the canvas is different for every track. This music might be largely reprocessed by a computer but it's paradoxically "authentic" as played on a guitar or a piano and this makes Mule a particularly intense and emotional experience. Review: Andrea Vercesi (CHAIN DLK)

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WIRE REVIEW

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AUN/Whitehorse/Blackhorse(oral cd 18-19)
These two CD's, released separately but amounting to a single body of work, are the sound of Dumais in isolation, free of the weight of commission or outside influence and they demonstrate a penchant for cavernous ambient soundscapes and tiny sepulchral whispers. Theres nearly two hours of music here, but it can be experienced as one vast gaseous drift. Stately melodies unfurl in slow motion, in the distance, air moves, rustling the autumn leaves. Review by: Chris Sharp (WIRE)

CRUCIAL BLAST REVIEW

AUN Blackhorse CD Oral

Canadian electronic artist Martin Dumais has been active in the Montreal underground music scene throughout the past two decades, beginning with the industrial project Odds in 1990 and later moving on to techno with Les Jardiniers and Juicebox. AUN is his latest project, steeped in dark drones and loops that are primarily sourced from guitar. I found out about AUN after Martin sent me a copy of his Blackhorse album that he released on the Oral label earlier in 2007, and was really impressed by his evocative, mesmerizing dronescapes and hypnotic melodies. The sound of Blackhorse moves from deconstructed guitar melodies that are heavily processed and reshaped into abstract forms, to deep reverberating powerdrones and distorted feedback. Beautiful, eternally rumbling strings and crushing, smoothed out frequencies somewhere in between the blissful dream-drones of Troum, the classic industrial ambience of projects like Cranioclast and Lull, and, at his heaviest on tracks like "Inkblot", the subterranean ritual throb of Sunn O))). Seldon Hunt's abstract album art and the appearance of those aforementioned heavy guitar drones might at first lead you to belive that this is indeed something along the lines of the current wave of dronemetal projects in the vein of Sunn O))), Black Boned Angel and the like, but AUN's dronescapes are more synthetic sounding, and much more detailed, with slowly drifting waves of oscillating tones sweeping over crystalline loops that seem to shimmer with dark luminescence. On "Unta Eyeless", something like an orchestral Troum is achieved, and "Cyan Card Rejector" turns into one of the more rhythmic pieces on the disc, as black buzzing distortion soars over robotic whale calls and dubby percussive hits. Blackhorse is a constantly changing and evolving album, an excellent collection of shadowed, heavy, and frequently crushing droneworks that reveals glimpses of great abstract beauty as each piece unfolds. Highly recommended.