Kicking ass quietly, Burlington, Vt.-based Greg Davis and Parisian Sebastian Roux's Paquet Surprise ("Surprise Package") is an acrobatic electro-acoustic record teeming with whispered field recordings, pretty experimentalism, and sunny pop. From Davis's overflowing Jewelled Antler cover collage to the music's constant ebb and flow, the collaboration is exceedingly well-composed.
Wielding a pair of music degrees, Davis is a Carpark vet and a former Keith Fullerton Whitman collaborator, a computer musician with a varied background in classical guitar, jazz, hip-hop, and improv. No slouch himself, Roux works as a programmer at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique Musique) and excels at ambiant drone. To the credit of these musical eggheads, the collection is a surprisingly loose-limbed, magisterial treat.
The first piece, "Sea Grasses and Blue Sea", could be the faintest field recording ever. Or not. It's hard to say what's actually making the sound, but what's dribbling out of my speakers feels much like the title suggests-- three minutes of underwater churning. More song-based, "I Am Waiting (For December)" is a plateau of icy glitch pop that quickly sprouts acoustic wings. The entire piece seems to be rocking on a boat; at one point, the sound of an aviary swells up and a jag of noise mixes with the humid chirps, creating a sort of feathery feedback-- enter chimes, a thumb piano, and so forth.
A standard trope of the album is tumbling, ruckus-filled transitions. Otherwise, it's difficult to pick out tendencies. Ever varied, the instrumental arsenal includes a variety of guitar, voice, gong, farfisa, kalimba, autoharp, glockenspiel, toy instruments, computer, violin, mijwiz (used beautifully by Nick Castro recently), vibraphone, and piano. Pieces such as "Air Castle" appear to be made of invisible bricks and magic beneath those gentle acoustic strums. On the other hand, more song-like "Good Decision" welcomes a cloud of cicadas, a quickly flapping guitar, and Elephant 6 harmonizing. Generally, I guess the feel is comparable to Tape.
The album's sublime centerpiece is the subtle, swirling "Tidal Pool", which slowly gathers seaweed and salt over 13 minutes. In some ways it recalls the opener, but cycles more like, well, a tide pool with a lapping, clipped percussion track-- until it bursts into dainty droning vocal choruses and glisteny sonics. This is followed by "I Never Met Her", a vocally muted Sea And Cake shake-n-wobble and another semiprecious pop piece, "Daybreak", which feels like a cultish magic carpet ride with its shellfish percussion and songing gong.
Describing each track makes the album sound like a bestiary, but in some regards, that's exactly what it is. Paquet Surprise is filled with so many textures and ideas it feels like some Edenic tapestry delineating the natural and the digital as one densely populated world.
