Laure Boer - Les mondes en gouttes Vol. 1, 2, 3 (2012–2024)
A retrospective of twelve years of unreleased work by French sound artist Laure Boer, collected across three cassettes. Divided thematically into introspective, hard and diverse, it makes choosing a soundtrack for your mood considerably easier. This is, after all, a three-hour listening experience that asks a great deal of your ears. They may eventually grow tired, but in return you receive immense satisfaction and an entire sonic world that gradually unfolds around you. Boer opens up her personal archive to us, revealing an intimate series of carefully crafted compositions.
Volume 2 is the most forceful of the three. Its mechanical drum rhythms breathe a raw purity. Echoes send the beats clanging through a metalworks: heavy and industrial. These are rhythms that could easily fuel some serious techno bangers. The opening track, “Hard Duster,” lays everything bare. “Face à Face,” which follows, makes it easier to take in. Pierced by distortion, “Sirènes” is repetitive, alarming and hypnotic. In this selection, Boer reveals herself as intrusive and demanding. She creates discomfort and intrigue. At times, the sounds seem to be playfully interacting, yet they can just as easily clang and grate. You are challenged at every turn.
Volume 1, by contrast, is none of these things. It offers soft chants, singing melodies, hazy atmospheres, imaginary landscapes and dreamy provocations. It showcases the musical diversity Laure Boer packs into her sonic narrative. Some tracks positively ooze with delight; others are steeped in seriousness. Some feel like carefully planned sonic excursions, while others resemble sudden flashes of inspiration. “Joie Discrète,” as she calls one of the tracks. A stuffy-sounding marching band on “Carnavale Sauvage.”
The third volume opens with an epic. “Late Night Manila” is an almost half-hour ambient trip built around vocals. A phasing effect stretches the sound endlessly, creating something vast and majestic. It begins with very little, until the calm is disturbed. Boer has fully made mechanical sounds her own. These tones return repeatedly, each time equally unsettling. The discomfort they create is almost painful: defiant and raw, as though not everything is allowed to be too beautiful—not even after sixty minutes. The same applies to “Battements De L’Aube,” with its swelling sound, like a hypnotic trip. “Chanson Douce” is exactly that: a gentle song. Boer offers up a disruptive world, a place where sounds pretend to soothe you, yet just as readily threaten to tear you apart. It is built on a hunger for experimentation, for colouring outside the lines and unsettling everything.
This sprawling collection is a magnificent introduction to her restless musical drive.