micro:mega
annex
For two men in their thirties, Sylvain Chauveau and Frédéric Luneau have indeed an impressive musical background. Frédéric is one of the founders of the band Löbe Radiant Dub System (4 LP released) and has been running the project Webcam (electro dub) on his own for a few years. He's also a talented photgrapher , creator of micro:mega's records artworks.
Sylvain was a member of the Watermelon Club before launching into a brilliant solo career. After his "Livre Noir du Capitalisme" (The Black Book of Capitalism) which seduced the critics in 2000. His second album "Nocturne impalpable" has received huge positive feedback. he released a miniCD, "Un autre décembre" (Another December) for FatCat and opened for Sigur Ros european dates in 2003. His last album is the original soundtrack music composed for the film "Des plumes dans la tête" directed by Thomas de Thier (Official selection at the Cannes Film Festival, 2003). Sylvain Chauveau also has some parallel projects: Arca, with Joan Cambon and On, with Steven Hess, from Chicago (the album, "Your naked ghost comes back at night" is just out now).
This enumeration isn't gratuitous, it enables us to understand, at least partly, where the richness and diversity of micro:mega's universe come from. Already endowed with very different sensibilities, the two musicians have drawn from their different experiences a marked taste for the use of a variety of materials and instruments and a great deftness in the mixing of multiple sound strata.
Thanks to that, the pair can smoothly conjugate electronic and organic and establish links between Labradford and Pan American's America, Autechre's England, Yann Tiersen's Brittany and Pan Sonic's Finland, without ever forgetting what melody means.
Less melancholic than its predecessors ("Photosphere" and "Human"), "Annex" is also perhaps less introspective, more open. While keeping a definitely unique place on the French electronic scene, micro:mega seem to have reached a kind of fullness that we are happy to share with them.
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