‘Un Coeur Simple’ contains music recorded for a play based on Gustave Flaubert’s novel of the same title (‘A Simple Heart’ in translation). However, familiarity with the book, either in its original language or in translation is not a prerequisite for gaining access to Mathieu’s subtle ambient composition.
This isn’t an album filled with dramatic peaks and troughs, but a succession of instrumental pieces built primarily around soft, undulating drones. Some of the titles may take the form of solid nouns (‘Maison’, ‘Église’), but the audio is every bit as abstract as the intangibly-titled ‘Trace’. The nine-minute ’Port’ softly tapers into ‘Perroquet’, a perfect and seamless segue that facilitates the smooth flow of the album from beginning to end.
‘Devenir Sourd’ stands out as the only track to prominently feature vocals, old recordings excavated and cracking like a funnel into history, a faded photograph of people and times long gone – one which is ultimately destroyed in a crackling swarm of distortion and earthworks. The past is decimated, and the future is uncertain, although the gentle acoustic guitar picking and birdsong of ‘Félicité’ is cautiously optimistic – or is it? Distant voices echo like the ghosts of those people erased from the preceding track are just audible, dissonant and unsettling.
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It would be interesting to see this music in the context it was intended, but happily, it stands perfectly adequately on its own.
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