As much as I despise Spotify’s business model of reckless exploitation, I must admit that I wouldn’t have found this exciting new sound neurosurgeon from France had I not been gently nudged to check it out by the weekly recommendations. Thomas Barrandon is a French film composer and instrumental electronica artist, by the looks of it – you cannot find too much online info about the artist and his Spofity profile is not very helpful either. His new album “Remembrance” just came out, on February 21st, 2025, via Lyon-based indie label La Ruche Le Label, and the title track, recommended for me by the Spotify algorithm, made such a huge impact on me that it would be a crime not to toot the horn for this fine selection of music. As the album’s Bandcamp page rather poetically puts it, these songs “capture the essence of our childhood memories – those suspended fragments of time where innocence blends with discovery.” So, in essence, the music is very cinematic and somewhat minimal, yet haunting in that electronic, spine-chilling BOARDS OF CANADA fashion. Thus, I reckon this stuff will be right down your alley if you’re into instrumental soundscapes crafted with a desire to perpetuate the wistful, visual aesthetic of vintage films from the 1970s and 1980s.
A brief, glitchy intro leads into the title track, opening the album. The sound design is full-on hauntology, and the tap-delay motif resonates with the air of vintage ORBITAL, that delicious “In Sides” (1996) era sound. Barrandon has written soundtrack music for quite a few (indie, I presume) films and it turns out that he is also a graphic designer by profession, so I guess the music’s explicit visual feel comes from there. When you put this music on and close your eyes, you can easily envision movie scenes unfolding against the dark canvas of your closed eyelids. Then, because I’m such a synth nerd, I cannot but appreciate the choices of such warm analog synth timbres across the whole album. In this respect, Barrandon‘s new music is a close match to CHROME CANYON‘s 2012 outing “Elemental Themes.”
Next up, “Time” gets even more minimal, without losing an inch of its emotional impact. Here and there, the synth ostinato is layered with glitchy samples to add a note of hauntology, again. Something in the song triggered nice flashbacks of a MySpace (remember, anyone?) track I found some 15 years ago – an instrumental synth track by Alessandro Pintus, a veteran electronic music producer from Sardinia, Italy. Sometimes, less is more, indeed. Here, the magic happens with a few synth notes repeating over a simple bassline; and, as far as I could figure out, the motif sticks to the first few notes of the natural minor key, without adding either Dorian or Aeolian color, specifically – simple and effective!
Highly effective and evocative is also the next 3-minute leg in this sonic journey, entitled “Mistaken.” The hook of the song is the sort of ”pumping” feel, courtesy of the syncopated synth riff and side-chain compression, giving the track a somewhat ”clubby” vibe, even though it’s way too mellow for the dance floor. The same kind of philosophy applies to the follow-up track, “Seeking Identity,” as well – the fast staccato synth riffs have “euphoric trance” written all over them, but the general flow of the song is still rather mellow. It’s almost as though Barrandon borrowed some age-old clichés from the electronic music manuals and ran wild with them. I guess it’s his sound design that makes even such clichéd approaches sound so superb. I would be very curious to know what gear he used while making this beast.
The only song that sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb is “Nostalgia,” featuring rapper Izaac Nova. In theory, this type of collaboration might sound a bit counterintuitive, considering the overall sonic terrain of the album, but, perhaps a little bit unexpectedly, the fusion of modern, mellow-styled rap and ambient synth textures works rather nicely! This is the only song featuring vocals on the album, so whether it is a good thing or not is entirely up to your preferences. I would rather have modern rap songs using this type of musical background instead of those gangsta beats.
The rest of the songs pretty much follow the template introduced in the first couple of tracks – nice ambient synth textures, mellow beats, and sounds of hauntology to spice things up. I might not exactly be up to date with my genre labels, but the latter half of the album comes off as rather synth-wave-like. The closer, “Unconditional Love” resonates with a nice, epic air of closure with its dynamically pulsating synth riffs and Blade Runner-esque legatos. I could not escape the feeling of the album bringing this fantastic sonic journey to a close on a somewhat TANGERINE DREAM-esque note. So, despite Spotify being such a predatory, capitalist swine, I guess I ought to be grateful for finding this absolute gem of an album. Even with its relatively short length of 41 minutes, “Remembrance” is one of those highly immersive, instrumental albums that can bring time itself to a halt, as if by creating a slight gravitational time shift relative to the outside world.
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Tracklist
- Remembrance
- Time
- Mistaken
- Seeking Identity
- Nostalgia
- Siblings
- Summer
- Winter
- Unconditional Love
Lineup
Thomas Barrandon – everything
Label
La Ruche Le Label
Links
https://www.instagram.com/thomasbarrandon
