Pierre Bastien, "Mecanoid"

Along with playing various instruments and contributing organic sounds,Bastien builds Meccano machine robots to "play" instruments to buildhis soundscapes on. He calls it both "acoustica" and "mechanica," andgives each song a palindromic title, as the robots "understand" thismusic the same forwards and backwards. It may seem a bit pretentious,but the music is phenomenal.
It's simple, as his robot orchestra (the"Mecanium") play simple loops that Bastien adds flavors to, but it's anamazing listen considering the concept. The robots play realinstruments: castanets, marimba, and the clearly favored "discs."(They're on 8 out of 10 tracks) Bastien's background is in composingmusic for ballet and string quartet. It's wasy to picture a ballet tothe music he creates now, as it encourages movement and choreography.Plus, since it is mechanic in nature, steady rhythms abound. Bastienalso uses non-standard instruments, making for interesting colors on analready oddly charming canvas. The music is groovy, it is jazzy, and itis covered in earth tones, which is especially ironic considering itsgenesis. Ultimately, the music takes on a life of its own, eclipsingthe author's and robots' intentions, changing directions and rhythms onthe fly. I cannot describe this music and do it any justice. Listen foryourself and you'll get a taste for how truly original and stupefyingit all is.

samples:

• Revolt Lover
• No Eon
• Sore Eros

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