Sauges - Pizza Soleil

 Released: May 8

This newest album from French duo Sauges is a rather eclectic and wide spanning album with two essential components. The first and most apparent component is the cimbalom played by Jules Wysocki, which has a rather piano-like quality in its tone and melody. From the first two tracks, it makes its presence known powerfully, especially so starting in the second track, “Ritournelle.” It is bright and persistent in its playing, giving pause for small moments in which the synthetic textures are allowed to breath and play in the forefront. Speaking of which, the second component is those synthetic textures provided by Sig Valax using a combination of modular and more traditional analog synths. In this track, they play mostly a background role, but in later tracks they periodically overtake the cimbalom and delve the soundscape into a bit of chaos.

Such chaos can be heard on a personal favorite, “Noisy Spring.” Valax’s modular proclivities take over and send things spiraling into a heavy and wildly dynamic noise-scape. The cimbalom plays into this theme joyfully, as the previous melodic bliss we heard in earlier tracks is gone and a variety of errant plunks and bonks comes from it, adding to the chaos in a gentle manner. There’s a very easy push and pull between the two artists throughout the album. It flows quite naturally as each willing plays into the others nonsense or sense on each track. “Éclat de douceur” represents one of the best balancing acts on the album as both artists make their contribution in seemingly equal parts, with Valax’s modular noises rise up above the slightly dour melody to punctuate the overall atmosphere. It’s this push and pull dynamic between the two though that really brings a sense of cohesion and drama to the album as a whole with their worldess dialogue ultimately feeling incredibly natural.