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Murcof's debut, Martes, was an elegant work that married samples of Morton Feldman and Arvo Pärt to electronic beats. In the six or so years since, Mexican Fernando Corona has released a set of remixes, Utopia, and two more albums, Remembranza and Cosmos. With each work his palette has become more sonorous, his soundscapes painted in lustrous shades of southern night and dark memories. Where Martes could be accused of being too deliberately appealing, the albums that succeeded it have sought and achieved greater depth.
The Versailles Sessions was written to accompany the annual festival of sound, light and water at the Chateau de Versailles. Specially recorded 17th century baroque instruments including harpsichord, viola da gamba and flute are the raw materials for Murcof's six compositions. Welcome to Versailles begins with crashes and the scraping of strings. After a succession of flute notes that stretch out over a cavernous space measured out by clanking sounds, drones ratchet up the tension.
Murcof's compositions are deliberately paced and stately in their unfolding. In their drawn-out notes, period instrumentation and echoing ambiences there's an eery hauntedness that resonates impressively. The jaunty lute of the finale Lully's Turquerie As Interpreted By An Advanced Script plays out against a murmuring backdrop and shows that hauntology isn't the sole preserve of the Ghost Box label.
Throughout, there's a sense of phantoms, broken symmetry, lawns gone to seed, the gradual corruption wrought by time. On Spring In The Artifical Gardens, notes are sounded and allowed to reverberate for extended periods in a way that brings to mind Alain Resnais' film, Last Year In Marienbad. Other pieces suggest the unsettling strangeness of the closing scene in 2001 A Space Odyssey. Given the tremendous resonance of the place, The Versailles Sessions might have sunk under the weight of its pretension, thankfully Murcof avoids this while presenting a suite of varied parts that is impressive in its reach and seriousness. --Colin Buttimer
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
David Stubbs, The Wire. December 2008
"an absolute pleasure"
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
As all reviews are based upon one,s own perception I would not dare to critise those who don,t like this one.Please bear in mind this album is NOT the official follow up to cosmos merely a specially commission for the re opening of the Versailles garden fountain in the summer 08.
So ,we should be grateful that for those of us not there, most of us i suspect!,that we can now enjoy it in the comfort of our own homes( water feature not supplied !).
I have all the other Murcof albums and you can definately hear the linear progression in the feel of the music over the last 3 proper releases i.e. more musicality rather than pure ambient.This album merely picks up where cosmos ended i.m.o.
Now if you don,t like that route then thats up to you(see my comments re same issue re Vidna Obmana,s Spore ,Legacy,Tremors series),an artist could (and some do) repeat the same old formula time afte time.Now if you really like that formula then fine,but come on, after a while there,s only so many times to hear "live for ever "isn,t there ?
I like and respect an artist that progresses with each new release.That is healthy,if you do LOVE a particular style then just put that album on repeat in your ipod with random shuffle !
The music is very hard to describe accurately , but broadly it is Murcof with MORE strings and prominent female soprano all linked with the clicks and bleeps.It does sound very good on my proper hi fi( not just my ipod)and at loud volumes it rattles the room with sub bass tones.
Best played in darkness with a few candles for atmosphere and try to recapture the original setting as it most have been like at Versailles.
So,I like it very much,so will and some won,t - "c,est la vie" as we say here in Yorkshire !?!
bye for now.
richard p .
So ,we should be grateful that for those of us not there, most of us i suspect!,that we can now enjoy it in the comfort of our own homes( water feature not supplied !).
I have all the other Murcof albums and you can definately hear the linear progression in the feel of the music over the last 3 proper releases i.e. more musicality rather than pure ambient.This album merely picks up where cosmos ended i.m.o.
Now if you don,t like that route then thats up to you(see my comments re same issue re Vidna Obmana,s Spore ,Legacy,Tremors series),an artist could (and some do) repeat the same old formula time afte time.Now if you really like that formula then fine,but come on, after a while there,s only so many times to hear "live for ever "isn,t there ?
I like and respect an artist that progresses with each new release.That is healthy,if you do LOVE a particular style then just put that album on repeat in your ipod with random shuffle !
The music is very hard to describe accurately , but broadly it is Murcof with MORE strings and prominent female soprano all linked with the clicks and bleeps.It does sound very good on my proper hi fi( not just my ipod)and at loud volumes it rattles the room with sub bass tones.
Best played in darkness with a few candles for atmosphere and try to recapture the original setting as it most have been like at Versailles.
So,I like it very much,so will and some won,t - "c,est la vie" as we say here in Yorkshire !?!
bye for now.
richard p .
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Heard one track from this by chance on Radio 3, "spring in an artificial garden" and it sounded intriguing, so bought the album.
Let'a assume that, like me, you are unfamiliar with the man or his work... i'm sure electronica experts have their own comparisons to make, but to a casual listener this is partly compelling, partly unsettling, but always interesting. Not malevolent music, but... still... a hint of the night around it. This is not music of sunlight, but of shadow.
Forget melody, think long drawn up tonal and textural progressions, with subtle tweaks and changes, and parts of this sound just like they are directly related to Ligety's "Atmospheres". So you could cut and paste this music into the movie 2001, no problem.
I'm sure that tied to a son et lumiere show at Versailles the music might have made more sense, but it still stands on its own two feet as a listening experience. A great listening experience? It seems to take itself very seriously and that might be the problem. It is no great work of art but, nevertheless, it IS a work of art. First track is the most compelling.
Let'a assume that, like me, you are unfamiliar with the man or his work... i'm sure electronica experts have their own comparisons to make, but to a casual listener this is partly compelling, partly unsettling, but always interesting. Not malevolent music, but... still... a hint of the night around it. This is not music of sunlight, but of shadow.
Forget melody, think long drawn up tonal and textural progressions, with subtle tweaks and changes, and parts of this sound just like they are directly related to Ligety's "Atmospheres". So you could cut and paste this music into the movie 2001, no problem.
I'm sure that tied to a son et lumiere show at Versailles the music might have made more sense, but it still stands on its own two feet as a listening experience. A great listening experience? It seems to take itself very seriously and that might be the problem. It is no great work of art but, nevertheless, it IS a work of art. First track is the most compelling.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Die hard electronica fans of Martes and Remembranza could be sorely disappointed here. Murcof has steered the output of this new album well clear of the glitchy, click-based ambient offerings that made him popular, and opted instead for a concept-sound much closer to the avante-garde (think Nurse with Wound, Zoviet France, possibly Current 93). Unfortunately though, if you are into this genre you may also be less than amazed, as the result loiters somewhere in-between, not quite sure of what it is; it lacks a certain braveness to be truly avante-garde, but at the same time is too obscure to be considered ambient. Not his best work unfortunately.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Murcof
Needs a few plays to start getting under your skin. Beware it will take over your head from there as its deeply layered with more to discover on each play. Read more
Published on 28 Feb 2009 by C. Gildersleve
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I bought this with only previously hearing one track and I didn't think the rest of the album was as good. Others may disagree but it's not for me.
Published on 4 Feb 2009 by A. Protheroe
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