Delphine Dora has always worked across a broad sonic field; her music moves between real-time improvisation, new music and a strange, at times melancholic avant-folk. She often uses her voice more as sound than as language. With this new album, she extends that palette further still. Here, she presents herself in an unusually rhythm-oriented mode, the repetitive structures creating a hypnotic drive.
L’inéluctable pulsation du temps was in fact recorded as early as 2018, effectively as an instrumental counterpart to L’inattingible (2020), probably her best-known album to date. Some of the tracks on that record carried a ghostly quality. At times, that latent eeriness also appears on the new release, for instance in the opening piece »Ubiquité«.
A counterweight is provided by piano arpeggios that sound pearling, at times even cascading; minimalist compositions form the foundation of the melodies. In the meandering »Flux«, these melodies take on an almost floating quality, while in »L’accélération inéluctable« they are grounded in droning sounds. »Désynchronisation« translates its title convincingly into sound. It is difficult to decide which of the melodies one wants to follow more closely. The track titles, incidentally, were inspired by an essay by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa on alienation and acceleration. With this album, Dora achieves something powerfully absorptive, far removed from her signature sound.
