From eggshell to egg is not far, and although Bézier’s sound is fundamentally grounded in a very different kind of earthiness than early Autechre, the album opener »Egg« inevitably recalls their track »Eggshell«. This has less to do with specific melodic contours or timbral similarities than with the construction of the pieces themselves: Bézier, too, links the mystical with the sublime, darkness with the celestial, allowing the music to exude industrial austerity while simultaneously hovering above it all.
For this, Robert Yang does not necessarily require beats, as the second track »New Age« demonstrates. Its intro initially layers coarse-grained, cathartic synth smears, before jittery flourishes begin to counterpoint the tatami-like atmosphere. This, then, is what the press release calls “doomed spa music”.
The title track »Decompose« would have fitted perfectly into the L.I.E.S. catalogue ten years ago: it combines upfront, exposed drumming with frayed EBM vocals and builds tension through a pointed synth sequence. The longer Decompose unfolds, the more sinister the album becomes, summoning a liturgy of darkness through synthetic organs and undead chord colours, in which easy listening turns into a foreign concept. Over the course of the record, Bézier’s particular strength becomes apparent: an ability to conjure an end-times mood through astute melodies and even more astute arrangements – a feeling that seeps out of wall cracks, drains and ventilation shafts.
Decompose
