Etherreal (FR)

Beside his work in collaboration with Taylor Deupree (about which, moreover, we failed to mention the latest event, released a few weeks ago), Marcus Fischer continues his solo career, but on a pace clearly less supported than other musicians operating in this same ambient register. Indeed, Loss is his first real personal album for more than five years (if we put aside a collection of live recordings), which allows us to approach it with a certain expectation, strengthened by the very good memory of his previous publications.

In the straight line of the latter, the United States has once again plunged into old audio tapes, reworked and re-recorded and on which he grafted some notes beaded or agree gently scraped guitar. The result, shared between sound snippets and delicate fragments, excites by its luminosity and its harmony, as if the touch of Fischer took an extreme care not to be too dry, nor too much hooked, flowing marvelously in the folds of the revived bands (Strand, While or Home). Brilliant with vibrancy and vibrancy, the seven tracks of the album are so many successes, in a register where the musician manages to stand out while remaining in a certain tradition.

While we are sometimes at the limit of the audible or the infra-thin, the presence of a real instrument (guitar, so, but also barely touched piano or electric keyboard used with smoothness) comes to densify the about, adding flesh and body to the basic analog material. At the same time, in tune with a cover art that presents us with a steep seaside, Marcus Fischer also knows how to integrate some sounds that seem to come from the outside and from nature, like these cracks and creases of Murmurations (sound of footsteps on the leaves of an undergrowth, crackling of a chimney fire?). This beautiful ability to question the imagination and make it wander is not the only quality of a totally recommendable album.