Quiet Voices - Hantologies (2023)

French ambient/downbeat maven Jean-Yves Leloup guides an evocative, cinematic collage of sampled voices and noirish atmosphere as his first Quiet Voices LP with Sähkö - think Julien Neto, Chris Marker’s La Jetée score, Scorn’s Murder Ballads, Maxence Cyrin.

Toned with a typically gallic smokiness and ponderous air, ‘Hantologies’ mints a new project for Leloup; a pivotal french journalist, curator, DJ and playlist maker also known as one half of RadioMentale, and a key presence in his native ambient/downtempo field. Sifting choice snippets of film dialogue over slow, plangent keys and diaphanous synth pads, he conjures a wistful feel and gauzy narrative thru the subtlest gestures, with a cinematic storyline emerging from the smoke as it progresses from Hancke-esque brood in ’Story of New Ancestors’ to the eerie sci-fi sublime of ‘When Computers Began to Misbehave’, and along dreamlike corridors of keys and voices in ‘And Time Went By’, to the final part ‘Quiet Voices of the Ether’ and its transition from barely-there, Lynchian atmosphere to heart-in-mouth choral life.

“Quiet Voices is a collaborative musical and sound art project, mixing ambient & electronic music, cinematic atmospheres & spoken word, founded by Jean-Yves Leloup, featuring musical pieces he composed with Hélène Vogelsinger, Villeneuve & Morando, Wild Anima, François-Eudes Chanfrault and Maxence Cyrin.

Most of the composers involved in this project are all working in the field of cinema, composing music using electronic and acoustic instruments. All these musicians are also working in the field of modern classical, ambient and electronic music. Through the use of spoken voices (some of them coming from films), the Quiet Voices project can be heard as a tribute to the power and emotion of cinema. Each track can be heard as a short film, or a scene, fostering the listener's imagination. All the pieces from the record are dealing with the themes of time, memory, death or loss, and often dealing with the idea of an imaginary intermediate dimension between life and death.”