Atone: Un Jour

It’s rare to see it come out of France, but multi-instrumentalist Antoine Monzonis-Calvet has created something quite particular in the border area between electronica and postrock. Piano suites and organ scapes resonate and reverberate off industrial ruminations similar to the early, pre-grandiosely symphonic Godspeed You Black Emperor!, but Atone roams on the more electronic side of ambient, explorative sounds, not miles from Maps + Diagrams, Loscil or perhaps on occasion a lo-fi Cliff Martinez. The charm here is that Un Jour often has a clear European and French slant, not least on “Accordeon” with the beautiful bohemian blue tones of that quintessentially Parisian instrument. Un Jour is intensely melodic and finely crafted, pulling back elements of the music to add air between the layers and allow the listener to venture himself in between. An album of intriguingly beautiful peculiarity in the detail.