AUTOMELODI - "Cavallo" (EP Review)
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Montreal's Automelodi is an evolving synth project based around the solo work of songwriter and producer Xavier Paradis. After the critically acclaimed "Surlendemains Acides" and " Mirages au futur verre-brisé", Xavier has come out with another masterclass in synth-pop, darkwave, and italo disco. Through a sophisticated blend of progressive electronic hooks, and literary stylisations delivered in French, Automelodi creates a liminal frozen "paysage" drawn in Bauhaus and neo-plastic aesthetics. Geometrical potential is explored and demolished by pushing the boundaries of order, balance, and minimalism. Could we even classify them as "minimal wave?". Somehow I can't shake the feeling that this would be a gross and mediocre mischaracterisation. While I mostly regard minimal synthwave as revival, this project is so much more than that. Warm analogue melodies are the epitome of nostalgia, but the lyricism, the songs structure, and the revolving loops and repetitions hints at something way more progressive and contemporary as an overall approach. "Cavallo", the opening track, holds a rhizomatic repetitive structure powered by throbbing 80s percussions, icy synths, and charming countermelodies. The song itself, conjures a wounded horse, forever racing towards the unknown, lost in repetition, with no actual destination. It mirrors a sort of Samuel Beckett's Godot that never comes, and the ache of misplaced hope, disappointment, and cyclical illusions. Only a great contemporary artist could come up with a product of this sort, of that I am absolutely certain. More often than not, I come across great "revival" music, but as technically accomplished as it may be, it's still revival music. It is beyond rare to discover artists who are able to use it as a vehicle for something else, something fresh. Xavier Paradis celebrates the concept of revival while simultaneously destroying it in a sort of organised chaos that repeats itself to infinity. It is in the absence of its very finality that it finds destruction, resistance, and rebirth. It is the ultimate "act of art". In "Riquet ne chante plus" this intent is just as apparent. Probably the standout track on this EP, it sounds like a snippet that wrote itself. It feels immediate, turbulent, chaotic, and irreversible in its surrealist automatism. It makes you question the "act of art" itself and its hypnotic and subconscious nature. Is the looping drum machine mirroring Xavier's subconscious? or is it the incessant call of the void ("appel du vide")? What is even art? A sudden fleeting urge to do something reckless, out of the ordinary. A movement that breaks whatever cycle of immobility or repetition. "Western Sans Serif" does just that. It's another stylistic and aesthetic metaphor that not only is consistent with the EP cover/artwork, but with the geopolitical landscape of the Western world. Sound artist James Nicholas Dumile Goddard features on this track with the saxophone, that becomes the only "non automatic sounding" element and is absolutely vital in the progressive conclusion of the song. It's the "voice out of the chorus", the only component that behaves spontaneously. Automelodi's music feels urgent, but meticulously thought through. How could we possibly call this "revival" or "minimal wave"? I think there is nothing minimal about Xavier Paradis. Not even his Cavallo album cover is.
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