Les Halles - Zephyr (2018)

The welcome and wondrous return of Lyon musician Baptiste Martin’s aerial ambient identity Les Halles, following a year’s sabbatical from recording, Zephyr takes its name from a light westerly wind, which aptly evokes the warm, weightless, whispering spirit of these beguiling electro-acoustic designs. Working entirely with a computer for the first time, Martin’s sample bank swelled in both depth and detail, giving his compositions a crisper focus and finer grain. Slovakian fujara flutes shudder and shimmer, offset with rippling PVC panpipes, chimes, and gentle webs of delay.

The tracks are titled according to their sample source, designated with one of three words that are same in French and English: horizon, mirage, and distance. Martin speaks of these pieces as conjuring “landscapes with almost no human traces,” and his criterion for completion is simple: “When I feel like I’m losing the perception of time while listening.” Nine new divinations by one of today’s most attuned waking dreamers.