Bruno Duplant & Rutger Zuydervelt
Edge of Oblivion (36:00)
cd/dl/stream, May 2024
Pre-order here
After l’incertitude (Crönica, 2020) and Synchronicité
(Sublime Retreat, 2021), Edge of Oblivion is my
third collaboration with Bruno Duplant.
It is very heavy.
Reviews
Ambientblog
I could easily fill this whole blog with the music of Rutger Zuydervelt (or Michel Banabila, for that matter) – sometimes it is hard to choose. But since these two albums are released almost simultaneously, I may as well mention Zuydervelt‘s collaboration with French artist Bruno Duplant. It’s not the first time these two worked together: in 2020 they released their collaboration album L’incertitude; followed with Synchronicité in 2021.
With current high-speed connections, artists can collaborate without meeting each other in real-time. But for Duplant and Zuydervelt, this approach wasn’t satisfactory: “Bruno sent me his parts, and I added mine. And we were happy. Until we weren’t and decided to shake things up a little: Bruno’s parts were trashed, keeping only my whizzing sci-fi noises. A slab of organ was then thrown into the mix, adding a sense of menace and unease with its atonal tone clusters. Some more editing and
fine (de)tuning was done, et voila…”
The result is a 36-minute ‘heavy disorienting trip’ indeed! One that can best be experienced in half-dark with speakers on full-blast, or with a quality headset. Don’t know what the edge of oblivion looks like, but now we know what it may sound like.
Vital Weekly
For Duplant, it is the second release I have heard of him this week, and it’s pretty different from his work with Seth Nehil. The density I know from his other work, and not as apparent in his work with Nehil, is present here in full force. Who is doing what here? We can safely assume there are a lot of electronics at work, along with some more orchestral sounds, all looped around and arriving in a vast mass of sound. Halfway through this 36-minute work, the synthesiser/organ becomes a solo instrument with individually played notes hanging around in this air of heaviness. Sometimes, the orchestral samples take a shine, and there is a delicate dissonant ring to the music, almost something between a horror soundtrack and a church mass. It could be an atypical work for Zuydervelt (but we can also argue: what would be typical for him, anyway), known for some dense music but on a more abstract level, and on this massive approach and not as orchestral. As always, I am too first to admit that I have no idea if this is true. It ‘just’ sounds more like Duplant. Either way, this is an excellent collaboration of two like-minded busy bees.
