March 19, 2021 - Roche Musique
Flowing in on a wave of dried pampas grass, effervescent allium flowers, and crisp smoketree, Maxime aka Katuchat is here with his debut album. The French artist and producer has been leading up to the project with a selection of singles and visual teasers, but, like the still life of Still Life, the strength of the project lies in the parts coming together.
Notes from a dusty piano gently push the curtains open on a large floor-to-ceiling window, with gentle rays of sunlight making the motes of dust sparkle with synthesized chords and light rhythmic patterns. ‘Sirocco’ plays with space as well as time, like a room filled with thin slits into which one can perceive the same space in the past, future, and present. It’s a playful yet somber approach, with field recorded ambiance and jagged samples dotting the environment just enough to provide a rich underlayer. Maxime leans into the playfulness on ‘Prairie,’ with a plucked melody playing tag with a crisp hip-hop beat. Other melodic and percussive elements take on interchangeable roles as sensory extensions, popping in and out of the space like bubbles of carbonation. It’s an otherworldly experience that begins to feel firmly rooted in the core of the project.
‘Home Is Not a Place’ squeezes listeners into a dark corridor, thick and claustrophobic with looped ambiance before the tension breaks with London artist Sølv’s dreamlike voice cascading over the walls in waves. Miami’s Chester Watson floats to the surface of this new soundscape, riding on the currant with introspective verses on life, love, and loss. Watson’s vocals contrast with the syrupy treatment of Sølv and the rest of the production, at times having to push to stay above the surface. It’s a grounding effect, placing the listener on the same plane as Watson as the rest of the world dissolves and rematerializes in tandem. ‘Pink Satin’ throws us in the backseat of an old sedan, turn signal ticking against a backdrop of rain and asphalt. Maxime pulls harmony and cacophony together from all sides, like stretching hot sugar into taffy. It’s a viscerally visual feeling, with the strong ebb and flow in production hitting the visual and auditory cortexes at the same time. The slight key shift at the end pushes the emotion upward, subtly hopeful, slightly bright.
The darker chords of ‘Dust’ bring the emotion back down a notch. Percussive clicks once again feature heavily, staying just out of focus in the corners of the mind; voices are chopped and skewed in similar haunting fashion. Some distinctive palatal clicks/tongue pops bounce around the space as the chords draw towards infinity. ‘Together in Delight’ features Montreal’s LIA against a chilly city park backdrop. The instrumental takes a slight step back here, with LIA’s vocals taking lead in the dance amongst the trees and benches and fountains. Subtle chords build on waves of strings toward the end, pushing the track up through the cool night air.
‘Memento’ inverts the sentiments of the previous track, plunging into the depths of dark glitch noises and guttural synthesized breath. The ambient bird song remains, though it is mostly drowned out by harsh percussion and deep resonance. The tension flows into ‘Flashover,’ carrying over the glitches and synthesized organics to a more melodic space, full of swelling chords and tingling warbles. Moments of silence offer waypoints for new elements to join in and back out.
‘Santa Rosa’ continues down the path laid out by ‘Memento’ and ‘Flashover’ with intricate polyrhythms marked with sporadic melodic stabs. The dusty piano grows more confident here, calling out to the void with layered, sometimes slightly dissonant chords. Bright chimes shimmer around the piano, tickling the eyes and ears with prismatic light sparkling amongst the keys. From here, Maxime eases us into the descent. ‘Baby Blue Eyes’ feels contemplative in a way not felt before on the project, looking back at the album, the year, the decade with eyes closed in soft sadness. Though there certainly is a lot to be sad for throughout recent time, it’s not a lasting sadness; everpresent joy will find its way.
These pieces exist as moments in time, frozen to be looked at, analyzed, and thought of later. Maxime pulls together harmony, rhythm, and expression over countless genres and timelines, uprooting sonic inspiration from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The moments are multifaceted, ready to be explored again from new angles and different perspectives in time where they will grow anew, creating new moments upon new moments, until there is nothing. 🍍