I Am a Vowel
Et Op La Bang

Format: CD
Design: YOSG

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INFORMATION:

I Am A Vowel is Nelly Larguier from Paris, France. Et Op La Bang is her debut album.

And it is someting else indeed. With her voice, stones and a laptop computer, I Am A Vowel has created a pop-drone masterpiece. Vocal fragments give a seldom heard closeness to this tale of stars and
creation. It gets inside your ear, you can feel your ossicles.

I Am A Vowel on Myspace.

TRACKLIST:

1. Mlle Spirale
2. Et
3. Et
4. Et Op
5. La
6. Bang
7. Bang Bang
8. Une Etoile

REVIEWS:

Drone is one of those genre distinctions that, when you hear it described, sounds like a joke. "The humming of high voltage wires." "The sound of ice melting under water." "Music created by sampling stones." There are plenty of examples of how hilariously absurd it can seem when attempting to visually explain the intricacies of such a seemingly monolithic yet potentially textured genre. Adding to the perceived lack of legitimacy is the fact that only in certain cases are such descriptions close to being accurate. In the case of French artist Nelly Larguier’s project I Am a Vowel, however, such left-field textual translations are truly apt.

Her album debut, Et Op La Bang, is a very creative effort that uses nothing but stones and vocals as instruments, with recorded samples cut to pieces and pasted together. The experimental nature of I Am a Vowel might throw a lot of people of, but the result is a very interesting and fresh-sounding sonic mass. Whereas most drone artists tend to make their music thick, layered, and, well, droning, Larguier opts for a more pitched and clicky sound, where sharp cuts bounce peacefully up and down atop a base layer of more traditional drone-like white noise. The immediate results, especially when coupled with the notion of what Et Op La Bang exactly is, makes for a fascinating listen, where every slow (we are talking drone here after all) twist and turn offers something new for hungry ears to feast on.

Larguier also uses her voice to an extent that is rarely heard within the genre; the softness of her vocals rests in a nice contrast with the sharp edges of the rhythms (is it weird to consider rocks clacking together as beats?). Although no traditional lyrics are to be found, Larguier manages to pull off the vocal experimentation without it sounding like a pretentious art-school mess. Of Et Op La Bang’s eight tracks, "Mille Spirale" and "Bang" are the stand outs. Both tracks capture everything that makes I Am a Vowel’s music stand out from a crowd, with their stuttering beats and harmonic vocal experimentation.

Much is made in music criticism, especially when considering experimental electronic structures, of the distinctions between organic and synthetic sounds, and in that traditional context Et Op La Bang’s distinctly synthetic sound presents quite a conundrum. After all, could anything be more organic than stone? // Daniel Svanberg, Lost At Sea

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Bakom I Am A Vowel står fransyskan Nelly Larguier vars ljudskulpterande debutplatta är lika sparsmakad som forskande. Ljud alstrade av röst, stenar, dator. Åtta låtar under en halvtimme. Musik skivbolaget definierar som ”pop-drone”. Drone, okej, men till pop är det långt.

Visst finns det rytmer i Larguiers musik, det är nästan ofrånkomligt med tanke på att hon arbetar med loopade slagverksljud som vridits och filtrerats. Stenarna låter mjuka och blöta, jag får för mig att de är solvarma, nyss plockade på sandstranden. Ovanpå dem flyter svepande ljud i långa linjer. Ibland kryper Nelly Larguiers röst in i ljudbilden. Men, som hon deklarerar med namnet, det vokala handlar om vokaler, så vad gäller textinnehåll blir det tämligen enstavigt. Men även ett ”e” rymmer en del i denna mikroskopiska electronica.

Experimenterandet är den stora behållningen med ” Et Op La Bang”. Låtarna är skisser, utkast till musik som kunde ha vuxit i storlek och djup. Men det gör inte så mycket, för Larguier har konsekvent reducerat uttrycken när det gäller datorbehandlingen. Den ljudpalett hon använder utnyttjar hon väl. Och det låter underskönt. Lite som Kosmische Musik, framför allt den ambienta delen av krautrocken, skivor som Popul Vuhs ”Affenstunde” och Tangerine Dreams ”Zeit”. Sämre sällskap kan en fransyska ha. // Sven Rånlund, Soundofmusic

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I Am A Vowel release 'Et Op La Bang', a CD of dark dubby ambience & minimal space techno for electro mice. There's a bit that sounds like a mongoloid fly trapped in a griswald & spongetwat flange-ometer. Then a processed vocal snippet surrounds your conscious state, obviously designed to make you stab your neighbours cat in the head with a garden hoe. This is music for people obsessed with the tortured echoes of moths trapped in abandoned piping in a dank cellar under a motorway bypass at 3 in the morning. Wibbling glitchy tap drip bad hallucinogenic woodlice-tronica. // Norman Records

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There are small rhythmic particles flying about (stones?) and loads of time stretched sounds (voices?), but it doesn't quite constitute as pop to these ears. No problem I think, as the material is quite nice. It has a certain intimacy, one that is not uncommon in the female parts of the micro world (think AGF or O.Blaat) [...] // Vital Weekly

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'The textural sound-sculpting on Et Op La Bang, Nelly Larguier's I Am a Vowel debut album, is so restrained it begs to be labeled introverted.
// Textura