Romain Barbot & Greg Buffier, the experimental duo from Toulouse, France, that produce music under the name of Saåad, hit hard with their new full length album, leading you into dark and gorgeous places, with smoothed out angel choir bliss, hushed sonar reverb and minimally layered tones that ebb and flow with human emotion. Huge sounds, mini sounds, layers of drones, blurred melodies, field recordings are combined all together for the finest vision of drone and ambient music you can find nowadays.
Following last year's cassette release of Orbs & Channels as well as digital EPs, CDs and some splits Eps – the one with Postdrome is awesome - the Toulouse-based duo Saåad are back with the album Deep/Float, that's also their debut LP with Hands in the Dark Records label.
Deep/Float it’s fully immersive, and the best way to experience it by letting your ears get used to what’s going on, the same way you let your eyes get used to the dark.
The range of sounds that Saåad offer with the upcoming album is fantastic. Everything from crisp, atmospheric highs to the deepest low-frequency rumbles. The music here really puts you somewhere.
The album is divided into five movements broadly inspired by their week-long auditory experiments at the Fa farm in 2013 where, in a valley at the foot of the Alps, they improvised music in a completely natural atmosphere using three giant horns reverberating against a cliffside to amplify their sounds. And listening to the 40 minutes of Deep/Float is like being there, in that valley, where each sound resonates in a way that you don't understand where it comes from and notes give light and darkness to the surrounding landscape.
The first movement, ‘Valley Of Quartz’, is a lengthy exercise in a sound collage where unidentifiable metallic and industrial clatters swirl and hover around a driving rhythmic tone somewhere between a drone and sub-bass electronics. The following 'Alone In The Night' follows the same path of the opening track and, despite the title, it brings you in deepest darkness. Towards the end the atmosphere change and floating the dark valley you can see some ray lights becoming more and more bright. It’s an atmospheric piece.
'Giant Mouth' starts with a series of field recordings that can scary you. You don't know if it's just the sound of the wind or the steps of someone coming, or a combination of both, but there is considerable tension at play. I love the way the song evolves with a powerful crescendo so that the overall sound is really piece of mind.
'Giant Mouth' gently dissolves into 'I Will Always Disappoint You' and, once again, identifying each sound is an exercise in futility, and the whole mix is amplified exponentially to the point where it becomes unrecognizable. 'I Will Always Disappoint You' is dark and deep; it's a moment of intimacy between you and yourself cause darkness is everywhere and the only thing you can see is your image mirrored around you.
If 'New Helicon' sounds drifting in and out of focus like a view obscured by fog, 'After Love' is where the album achieves its top. The composition seems positively charged with bright lights, brave hope and calm introspection. Listening together the last two songs, it's like if the sound gradually develops into something spectacular, illuminating the music with soaring strings and the effect is like if we float high in the sky with them.
The journey through Deep/Float ends here and for sure the French duo confirm their ability to produce magnificent dark drone that has the power to arrive directly and deep in the core of your soul and let you feel things you didn't expect.
Deep/Float in general is pure magic.
