Meril Wubslin goes to South London
Our record of the month is Faire Ça, the fourth album from the avant folk trio Meril Wubslin, released on Bongo Joe Records.
Our record of the month is not necessarily the best record of the month (Flavien Berger’s new offshoot record was also very good) but I've been busy with work, sickness and life changes so I thought it would be a good idea to once again translate a review I did for Goute Mes Disques.
It's difficult to talk about the new album from Meril Wubslin without mentioning their previous one: Alors Quoi [trad: So what]. It was their first release on the Swiss label Bongo Joe (more on that later). Alors quoi was a small miracle of intoxicating avant-folk, recorded directly to tape, with a minimum of electrified instruments. Synonymous with the first post-lockdowns concerts, the result was cathartic. I put this record at the top of my personal ranking for the year 2021, with a surprise perfect grade. I was obsessed by Meril Wubslin.
Everyone knows I love going to Geneva. I interviewed a handful of bands from there including the two guys from Cyril Cyril, the brains behind Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp and an angry dude called Typhon. Swiss music is at a very interesting point and it’s partly due to the popularity of Bongo Joe Records. The label and the shop have been around for a little less than a decade and it's run by Cyril Yeterian (one of the two aforementioned guys from Cyril Cyril). I would say that Bongo Joe focuses on two types of releases : great reissues of forgotten music from all around the world and new music from genre-bending entities that sometimes are originating from their home country of Switzerland. This is where Meril Wubslin lives in the catalog of Bongo Joe.
Meril Wubslin has only two main members, sharing writing and singing duties: Christian Garcia-Gaucher, a Swiss guy now living in Brussels and Valérie Niederoest, still located in Lausanne. If you don’t know, Lausanne is the good twin of the evil Geneva, also located on the magnificent Lake Geneva (called “Lac Léman” for the French). I’ve never been but a boy can dream.
For Faire Ça [trad: Do This], their fourth album, they recorded in Lewisham in the studio of Kwake Bass, a regular collaborator of Sampha and Kae Tempest. I don't know who had the idea to send Meril Wubslin on a discovery journey in the London suburbs to work with a producer so far removed from their natural habitat. But when I heard the introductory riff of Au calme [trad: in a quiet place], I knew it was the right call to exceed the unattainable expectations set by Alors Quoi. A sideways leap that Meril Wubslin is used to since a comparable stylistic gap was taken between Alors Quoi and Sinon [trad: Otherwise] (their second, more post-rock record, released in 2016). Even when the band goes from the mountains to the city, Meril Wubslin change their soundscapes in permanent complementarity.
Is Meril Wubslin's music compatible with more modern production methods? Not all the time, because we obviously lose a bit of spontaneity. Fortunately, the producer and the band share a passion for dub mixing techniques. The synths, put on the sidelines during the previous record, are coming back in force. Their new drummer David Costenaro's bass drum is omnipresent throughout the entire album, following the listener with a reassuring beat. In the same way, their voices are highlighted like never before. On Tout est curieux [trad: Everything is curious], Christian Garcia-Gaucher's laconic rap has never been so crystal clear. So alien that I thought it was a guest. On the other hand, the coldness of Valérie Niederoest’s singing on “Grands espaces” [trad: Big spaces] serves as a stark contrast with the multi-layered instrumentation.
Always inspired by French traditional music, the intoxicating rhythms of the acoustic guitar resurface on Tout Passe [trad: Everything goes away]. And La main [trad: The hand] returns to the vocal harmonies between female and male voices. We sometimes get introduced to the strange concept of acoustic trip hop, most notably on Famille Phare [trad: Family Lighthouse] which summons the DIY anxiety of Maxinquaye. It’s a good one.
That’s all folks. See you in a bit for another rewiew. We’re definitely going to talk about Cyril Cyril again. I still don’t know if I’m going to talk about Gwendoline’s new record (it’s very peculiar) but let me know if I missed an album this year.