Encre Review

10/11/05

Album Review: Encre

Title: Flux

Label available on: Clapping Music

This is a staggering album I’d make no bones about it and unlike some albums I may have claimed to you all in the past, I literally didn’t see it coming.

Encre is the other project aka Yann Tranbour who I first met earlier on this year when he supported the wonderful Matt Elliott (aka Third Eye Foundation) and Manyfingers under the name of Thee, Stranded Horse.

Three, Stranded Horse is / was a display which hovered perhaps closely to a wonderfully distorted Rufas Wainwright playing a Kora and Guitar at the same time and then some.

Encre is as different as it can almost be.

Recorded between June 2001 and June 2002 ad then mixed between July 2002 to May 2003, this is a stunning album which brings to mind Philip Glass Vs Matt Elliott Days as Third Eye Foundation.

The difference here is the use of these strings and the way the orchestra moves up and down the songs. The mood is menacing but never depressing, taunting but never dark.

Songs like “Marbles” demand repeated listenings to take in all of the levels that more forward the song. This is not a album which can be listened to just once.

It demands to be listened over and over to and over again, and is perhaps summed up clearly by it’s title “Flux” as the first time you listen to it – it almost leaves you in a state of Flux – a state that can be only removed by constant re-listenings.

Recommended.