Chubby Wolf - L'histoire

Genre: Ambient. Drone
Label: Gears Of Sand

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With a name like Chubby Wolf, tossed out amongst the half-dozen or so other artists using the word “wolf” as part of their nomenclature, you might not be mistaken if you thought it yet another in a long list of noise-affiliated projects. But wait: L’Histoire arrives released on the intrepid Gears of Sand imprint, well-noted for its now dense catalog of experimental drone and distinctive atmospheric music, so any ideas of noise to the contrary can be formally laid to rest. Quite the opposite this music is, in fact the polar opposite. Across eleven meticulously sculpted, wind-chapped, albeit sometimes chilly, pieces, adorned with titles such as “Anti-body Library”, “Inverted Windows”, and “You, My Luminary”, Chubby Wolf demand you close the windows, turn the lights down to a faint dim, and let these potent miasmatic toneshifts waft between the four walls as they insinuate themselves in your subconscious. Like the work of Pauline Oliveros, L’Histoire is an exercise in deep listening, one that makes that demand implicit on its participant. Though all attendant sounds were created with a seeming paucity of means (toy piano, a heart monitor, and the obligatory electronic processing), the ends are justifiably vivid and contemplative, even downright lustrous. The poetic lilt the artist lends to a piece such as “Lay the Voice to Rest, Fear Mist” is pure sensation, literally and figuratively, supple, if shrill, wisps of sound tendering a bleak landscape. That the artist can render such poignancy out of the barest of electronic materiél speaks volumes about how the softest approaches can often yield the most concrete results. Oh, and Chubby Wolf is Dani Baquet-Long, half of drone avatars Celer, which goes some way to explain how these tattered sonic pages uncurl to reveal the argot residing deep within its mysterious L’Histoire.