Matamore Sepia Hours : When we'll cross these days, theses seasons and their closes (B,rec.2006-2007)***'
“Sepia hours”, with the chaotic city map on the front cover, truly is something like home-made city music which I imagine was made during some drying up streets hours after a rainy moment. Lonely project leader Sébastien Biset used his laptop to collect on them environmental sounds (a peeping iron gate, street noise of talking people and car horns, singing birds in trees, and a bit moving around), filtered white noise and more filtered noise from recording peaks, which he combines with Rhodes piano, constructed overtone-rich harmonic sounds for keyboard use, lap-top programmed rhythms of low bass and a higher pitched rhythm box, and also real instruments like an acoustic and an amplified guitar, with use of some reverb effects with them now and then, and his own voice : whispery, mourning and softly crooning, and mostly recorded with 2 or three different layers that are heard at once with some time delay, which are slightly more chaotic than harmonic in the mix. The tracks are moody illustrations that are more than a soundtrack, a capturing of a moment and condition, with some repeated ideas in the collage. There are hardly songs, but it is a coming to it, with its accompanying rhythms and moods, which are warm and lonely at the same time. The tracks construct themselves moodily, and in a descriptive way, with just a few increasing noise tensions, of change. Just the last track lets itself go in a complete ambient trip with nothing else added.
