Sylvain Chauveau - Abstractions (CD)

Neoclassical/experimental minimalist Sylvain Chauveau is back with a collection of remixes of both his own and other people’s work on this CD here. ‘Heart Beating’, originally by Agoria, has some sweeping cinematic Craig Armstrong-esque strings for a heartstring-tugging intro before a synth-heavy mix of Arca’s ‘Attractions’ brings us into a deeply groovy rumble-bassed hypno-nodder, and then Paul Duncan’s ‘High In The Morning’ sets us off on another tangent with sweetly picked guitar thrown into the spotlight to command proceedings on its own.

The album continues along this schizophrenic vein, with a mixture of Armstrong-meets-Richter dramatic emotional neoclassical business and more modern, experimental grooves which are well sequenced so that no two similar songs are next to each other, and yet the genre-flitting doesn’t ever seem contrived or grating. There’s powerful, soundtracky loveliness all the way through, basically. My personal highlight is his mix of his own ‘Derniere Etape avant le Silence’, which really pushes the moody cinematic neoclassical side of things to good effect, and the closing mix of StretchAndRelax’s ‘Grey’ with all sorts of backwards weirdness and detached vocals has a disconnected beauty to it, but there’s nothing on here that doesn’t seem worthy of inclusion. Solid collection.