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Parfum

by Zaumne

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  • Limited Edition LP
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    Black vinyl housed in a reverse-board sleeve
    Edition of 300

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1.
Voyageur 03:26
Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent Pour partir, coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons, De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s'écartent, Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons! Les uns, joyeux de fuir une patrie infâme; D'autres, l'horreur de leurs berceaux, et quelques-uns, Astrologues noyés dans les yeux d'une femme, La Circé tyrannique aux dangereux parfums.
2.
Sous les volants qu'elles chassent, Tourmentent les désirs obscurs et les agacent, Comme deux sorcières qui font Tourner un philtre noir Last night of petals I dreamed How spring will fall away with river stream We share the same sight I chase the moonshine As flying swans are but in nightfall And diving fish only leave ripples Last night of petals I dreamed How spring will fall away with river stream Last night of petals falling to a lagoon I dreamed of spring river stream
3.
Oeil Rouge 04:34
Dardant leur oeil rouge. Ils méditent. Sans remuer ils se tiendront Jusqu'à l'heure mélancolique.
4.
Éther 04:08
Au-dessus des étangs, au-dessus des vallées, Des montagnes, des bois, des nuages, des mers, Par delà le soleil, par delà les éthers.
5.
Tête 04:17
Et lent, sur ton cou large et rond, sur tes épaules grasses, Ta tête se pavane avec d'étranges grâces.
6.
Nymphes 05:33
7.
色が変わる火を振って 影になる 階段を下る また、渡すね 明るさに 暗がりに 沿う その声は 蜂のうなり 私たちは 色が変わる火を振って 影になる階段を下る、 まだ、下る
8.
9.
Fantôme 04:17
Et je te donnerai, ma brune, Des baisers froids comme la lune. Tu trouveras ma place vide, Où jusqu'au soir il fera froid.

about

Properly stunning fever-dreamweaving on this new one from Zaumne, occupying an elevated space at the intersection of flickering dub-pop and ASMR soundscaping. If you’re into anything from HTRK to Malibu, Félicia Atkinson to Voice Actor, consider it a major life enhancement.

For his Sferic debut, Zaumne enlists YL Hooi - a constant source of inspiration for many of us here, as well as Metoronori and the muted sax of Patrick Shiroishi. Loosely inspired by Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil’ (soft spoken extracts of which appear throughout), the album is a sort of exercise in escapism and sensual wandering.

Throughout ‘Parfum’, faded pop is fleshed out with surreal elegance: all flickering neon and half-heard whispers suggestive of blurred late night fantasies; liminal, abstract, and highly evocative. Sounds hang in the air like incense, caressing the senses with an intentionality that's missing from so much landfill ambient. On opening track 'Voyageur’ he sets the scene with pastoral field recordings, dragging a pitched voice and elongated pads through a rhythmic throb that reduces dub techno to a faint knock. There are echoes of music from the fringes of the afterhours club scene too: Andrew Pekler's obscure imaginary landscapes, Jake Muir's druggy bathhouse vapours, DJ Lostboi’s balmy introspection. But despite a shared bleary–eyed aesthetic, Zaumne’s sound is more explicit and well defined, and with it brings a more acute emotional pull.

When YL Hooi appears on 'Sorcières', her voice; drenched in reverb but absolutely crystalline, takes proceedings to a whole other level, reminding us of Natalie Beridze’s perennially overlooked ‘The Wrestler’ from her 2003 album for Thomas Brinkmann’s Max Ernst label; a sort of echo chamber dub perfectly re-imagined as dreampop. A whispered French vocal introduces us to 'Éther', a smoked cloud of looping synths and twinkling bells, and on 'Nymphes’ a wash of pads, wind chimes and waves lapping at the shore somehow manages to swerve all the associated schmaltz you’d imagine and instead gives us the same tingling sensation we had when we first heard Art of Noise’s ‘In Visible Silence’ at dusk, on a beach in the south of France, what seems like forever ago.

There's a ritualistic quality to Zaumne’s music too, as if he's burning rare gums and mosses over smoldering coals in a remote Carpathian clearing. Hikari Okuyama, aka Metoronori, brings her pointed surrealism to 'Ombres', adding a softly spoken wonder to Olszewski's chimes, while Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Patrick Shiroishi contributes horn curliques to 'Prairie', ushering us towards the same sonic space inhabited by Bohren und der Club of Gore and Julee Cruise.

Perfect late night music.

(Boomkat)

sferic.bandcamp.com/album/parfum

credits

released July 6, 2023

Written and produced by Mateusz Olszewski.
Mastered by Miles Whittaker. Cut by LUPO.
Moonlight photography by Kenji Ishikawa.
Design by Will Boyd.

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Zaumne Poznań, Poland

~ softly spoken ~

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