ELG - Vu Du Dome LP

Mutant troubadour Laurent Gérard, aka Èlg, makes an ideal addition to the misfits at Editions Gravats with Vu Du Dôme, a patently strange record resembling a sort of cryptic opera or the dramaturgy of a waking dream. Leading listeners up the garden path after the Mauve Zone album, the French-Belgian artist's latest album feels like a stroll around a topiary maze at twilight on a warm night, with Èlg acting as a spectral protagonist narrating/ranting in first person while a supporting cast including Catherine Hershey, Borja Flames, and Ernest Bergez only make the trip more unfathomable. Forming a bridge between improbable dimensions of musique concrète and chanson, or electro-acoustic and literary spheres, on Vu Du Dôme Èlg riddles his music to life with literal and metaphorical take on sound poetry; blending French language vocals with glossolalic babble against quietly enigmatic backdrops whose low, shifting lighting and mid-fi resolution lends them to comparison with illusive theater