Beaumont Hannant - Texturology

Après un premier album qui alternait de belles plages ambient et des titres plus durs, quasi-industriels, l'électronicien anglais au patronyme de Louisiane a atteint avec Texturology sa plus belle belle maturité d'expression. Des mélodies riches et plus affirmées, d'étonnantes inventions de rythmes, des développements harmoniques de toute beauté. Il y a un souffle quasi symphonique qui s'exhale ici, qui écharpe les froides sonorités des machines et fait de ce disque un monument mésestimé d'electronica. Teqtonik, rapide et acéré, reste très proche du travail d'un Aphex Twin. Pour ma part j’ai un faible pour Shades of Haze, une progression lancinante au violon ; et pour Vague, où l'ami Beaumont Hannant maîtrise pleinement son art de la sculpture électronique. Texturology est un album d’une élégance sombre et envoûtante, qui surprend par son esprit classique et son sens de la composition.
C'était en 1994, sur le label GPR. Trois ans, quelques disques et remix plus tard, il disparaissait de la scène electronica, laissant une production courte et inspirée.

Tracks
1 Teqtonik
2 Vague
3 Shades of Haze
4 Crouton
5 Mind Colours
6 A Summer Spent
7 Oblique
8 Woven Textures
9 Morphous
10 Latur

Beaumont Hannant is a musician, producer and DJ from York, England. His music and contributions extend to ambient techno, IDM, hip hop and indie rock. Hannant has received positive critical reviews and was named one of "The Faces of '94" by music magazine Select.
Thirteen years after its release, this and the contemporary, comparable "limited" issue still sound like the future, the past and the present. Picking elements that work in various musical subgenres while ditching their dodgy parts, Hannant blends the leftovers into a combination that, in theory, has limited chances of success. Nonetheless, "trance" melodies, "electro" programming, "industrial" percussions, "ambient" soundscapes all mix and create something else, uncategorisable, that must have confused music reviewers of the mid-nineties who had to make up new terms to define this kind of things.
IDM it became, then, and the name does not do the music justice too well: Music, yes; Dance, not necessarily, as it at least as suitable for armchair listening; Intelligent, well, it is not of the brainless kind and does tend to leave the mind wander about freely, that is for sure, but to call it intelligent seems quite pompous and gives the composer pretentions they might not have had. The even vaguer 'electronica' is perhaps more appropriate.
Anyway, the content mostly oscillates between dreamy, hypnotic and eerie with a clever rhythmic drive and, one can imagine, would be an ideal soundtrack for night driving or, more poetically, sleepwalking. The production is enormous and the attention to detail that permeates throughout Beaumont Hannant's work is certainly here at its peak.
One of those relatively unknown albums that would deserve a recurrent mention in the "which records would you take on a desert island" polls.