WORLD DEBUT OF ORCAS feat. BENOîT PIOULARD & THE SIGHT BELOW
Thomas Meluch is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and photographer, best known by his pseudonym Benoît Pioulard. Fascinated by natural sounds and the textures of decay, he began playing piano before his feet could reach the pedals, and for more than a decade has sought to create a unique sonic environment by combining remnants of pop song structures with the lushness and unpredictability of field recordings. Thomas continuous musical output has been documented for over half a deacade by Chicago’s famed Kranky records.
The music of The Sight Below conjures half-remembered dreams and soft-focus sentiments with elegiac beauty; like blurred snippets of film recognizable only as organic objects: black-and-white amoebas milling about, or a sunset rendered in grayscale. The resulting textured Gaussian curves are pinned to deep, propulsive bass tones and achingly subtle electronics. These guide the listener across the gloom and towards the music’s hopeful center. The results seem as effortless as natural phenomena; in fact, they’re carefully played, head-nodding hymns to the artist’s secluded life.
Glider and its accompanying No Place for Us EP, The Sight Below’s 2008 debut releases on Ghostly International, were well-received in selected experimental/ambient circles and in the music world at large, gaining plaudits from international publications and musicians (including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke). The Murmur EP followed in 2009, including remixes by Arctic techno pioneer Biosphere (Touch), Eluvium (Temporary Residence) and Simon Scott (ex-member of UK ‘shoegaze’ icons Slowdive). 2010 saw the release of yet another well-received album, It All Falls Apart. Described by All Music Guide as “impeccably made ambient thump-and-drone”, while Pitchfork Media called it “A beautifully bleak cloud of sound.” XLR8R magazine gave it a 9/10 ranking and praised it as “an astounding range of visceral sonic possibilities, a hurricane passing over an ocean, gathering heat and force while simultaneously cooling the waters below.”
The Sight Below has toured the world, playing a slate of successful shows at DEMF (US), Interferenze (IT), MUTEK (CA), Unsound (PL), and Sonar (ES). In this live context, he has collaborated with renowned Austrian guitarist Fennesz (Touch).
In the studio, The Sight Below has worked extensively with the aforementioned Simon Scott, Tiny Vipers (Sub Pop), and Benoit Pioulard (Kranky), while remixing labelmates School of Seven Bells, Detroit’s Echospace, and Germany’s Pantha Du Prince.