Browse by Artist: PIOULARD, BENOIT

Artist:	PIOULARD, BENOIT
Title:	Précis
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 098CD

"Précis is the first album from Thomas Meluch under his musical pseudonym Benoît Pioulard. Following a series of limited, handmade cassette and CD-R releases for friends and family over the last several years, and the well-received Enge EP, Précis arose as a documentation of a coming to terms with impermanence, marked by analog residue and the imperfections of human influence. A multi-instrumentalist with an insatiable palette, Pioulard bases most of his songs on treated acoustic guitars and honeyed vocals, backed by carefully layered bells, bass, dulcimer, old tape samples, field recordings and myriad other sources. These sounds, though sculpted roughly into pop songs, have their own delicate patterns of ebb and flow, distortion and disappearance. From the sunny refrain of 'Triggering Back' to the descent of nighttime chills on 'Needle & Thread,' Précis sighs in time with the seasons. It's an album about him, her, and you; it's an exaltation of the ways these things end."

Artist:	PIOULARD, BENOIT
Title:	Temper
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 123CD

"Temper is the second album by Thomas Meluch under his Benoit Pioulard nom de guerre. Composed throughout a year that involved graduation from university and a cross-continental relocation, its 16 tracks arose in specific periods of intense creative energy. Assembling various analog sources on basic software at home, Pioulard has honed his craft into a form that suggests something far grander. With soft-edged vocals and a broad palette of instruments that lately includes harmonium and cello, he constructs diverse arrangements that skirt the borders of pop with beautiful, detailed atmospheres. The scope and sonic narratives of songs like 'A Woolgathering Exodus' and 'Golden Grin' exhibit new degrees of musicality, while the weightlessness of 'Brown Bess' or 'Sweep Generator' reflects the unrestrained context in which the record was produced. It is no coincidence that the word 'temper' has more than 20 definitions related to basic existential aspects like emotion, behavior, and music; it offers many dimensions but also reveals how scrawny language can be in its attempt to name the abstract. On Temper, Pioulard endeavors to make sense of things in a tumultuous time, inspired by everything from medieval astrology to the poems of T.S. Eliot and the films of the Italian neo-realists. Fully aware of the mission's vanity, he is nevertheless consumed by its path."

Artist:	PIOULARD, BENOIT
Title:	Precis/Temper
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	2LP
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 123LP

2013 repress, originally released 2008. "The double LP vinyl version of this release also includes the Precis album, issued on vinyl for the first time. The second album by Thomas Meluch under his Benoit Pioulard nom de guerre. Assembling various analog sources on basic software at home, Pioulard has honed his craft into a form that suggests something far grander. With soft-edged vocals and a broad palette of instruments that lately includes harmonium and cello, he constructs diverse arrangements that skirt the borders of pop with beautiful, detailed atmospheres."

Artist:	PIOULARD, BENOIT
Title:	Lasted
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 145CD

"Lasted is the third album by Thomas Meluch under the alias Benoit Pioulard. Thomas has toured throughout North America and Europe since his last record, the process of which has had a marked impact on the development of these songs as lyrics and structures have been scrapped, tweaked and reworked in the live setting. As with previous albums, it was recorded and mixed in domestic isolation, this time throughout the rainy season in his current home of Portland, Oregon. While the extent of the dreary climate's influence on the results is left to the listener's discretion, what is certain is that Thomas has a preternatural ability to weave disparate sound components into a cohesive sonic tapestry, mixing a varied palette of field recordings and percussive elements along with melancholy melodies to create songs that recall -- and are akin to -- vespers of long-buried memories."

Artist:	PIOULARD, BENOIT
Title:	Hymnal
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 178CD

"Hymnal is the fourth kranky album by Thomas Meluch under his musical alias Benoit Pioulard, following Précis (2006), Temper (2008) and Lasted (2010). It was written and recorded throughout a year spent in southeastern England and on the European mainland, during which the ubiquity of religious iconography and grandiose cathedrals became an unexpected muse. Raised as a Catholic but never especially pious, Meluch drew on this aspect of social history as the basis for Hymnal's 12 chapters. He notes a particular preoccupation with the ways that faith offers a sense of solace and belonging in an existence that inherently provides none, framed in a context of tradition, ritual and the notion of the eternal. Themes aside, Hymnal contains some of Meluch's most expansive instrumental works ('Knell', 'Gospel') and fully realized pop compositions ('Hawkeye', 'Reliquary', 'Margin'), making for a rich and dynamic long-playing arc. Also featured are string arrangements by kranky label mate Felix and guitar work from ambient maestro Kyle Bobby Dunn."

Artist:	PIOULARD, BENOIT
Title:	Hymnal
Label:	KRANKY
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	KRANK 178LP

LP version. "Hymnal is the fourth kranky album by Thomas Meluch under his musical alias Benoit Pioulard, following Précis (2006), Temper (2008) and Lasted (2010). It was written and recorded throughout a year spent in southeastern England and on the European mainland, during which the ubiquity of religious iconography and grandiose cathedrals became an unexpected muse. Raised as a Catholic but never especially pious, Meluch drew on this aspect of social history as the basis for Hymnal's 12 chapters. He notes a particular preoccupation with the ways that faith offers a sense of solace and belonging in an existence that inherently provides none, framed in a context of tradition, ritual and the notion of the eternal. Themes aside, Hymnal contains some of Meluch's most expansive instrumental works ('Knell', 'Gospel') and fully realized pop compositions ('Hawkeye', 'Reliquary', 'Margin'), making for a rich and dynamic long-playing arc. Also featured are string arrangements by kranky label mate Felix and guitar work from ambient maestro Kyle Bobby Dunn."

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