SEULES LES PIERRES N'OUBLIENT JAMAIS

With ten full-length albums already under his belt, Sébastien Gramond is now turning to soundtrack writing, this time for a little-known French film. While I have not seen the film that the music here scores, one can tell by the stark change of musical style that this was something different for the French multi-instrumentalist. Shedding much of the rong sound for a more ambient and mellow approach to music, Gramond's soundtrack to 'Seules Les Pierres' shows the artist traversing regions of his creativity he had not yet crossed, and in doing so, creattes something fresh and more interesting than the typical album the man might come out with. However, due to the album feeling more like a collection of only somewhat realized ideas, the music here may have fared better on the film than as an audio-only product.

Although still varied, the music here tends to favour quieter, piano and flute-oriented tracks over anything heavier and more energetic. From the introductory track- a beautiful flute piece- onwards, the listener is graced with quite a few snippets of great incidental music. A few exceptions to this typical soundtrack music are here however, most notably the typical blues song 'Complainte Administrative', which is a certain low point of the album, due to its somewhat weak vocal work and break from the flow and theme of the rest of the album. The highlight for this record for me would certainly be 'Reves De Lendemain', which gives the distinct feeling of a lullaby, driven gently by flutes and pianos; really beautiful stuff. 'Bonne Justice' also ends the album on a brilliant note, incorporating gothic themes into the music to make for a chilling, and beautiful close to the album.

I am really torn here, and close to considering this the best Sébastien Gramond album I have heard thus far, but an inconsistent flow of the music and the fact that few of the musical ideas here are fleshed out into full songs tends to rob the album of being considered a full-fledged triumph as an album. In any case, I can only hope that Gramond chooses to follow this new style and develop upon it.