»Ambient music is like the amnion, the delicate membrane that surrounds the foetus in the womb«, wrote author Simon Reynolds in his classic »Energy Flash« (1998). A strange comparison, considering that the foetus also urinates into the amniotic fluid. But of course Reynolds was concerned with other associations that can be traced back to the band Deux Filles, founded in 1981. The two The The renegades Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker slipped into the roles of two French girls for this project. The motif for the transformation, which also makes fetal development so exciting, was so real for the two of them that they sometimes had the feeling that they were really becoming these girls. What had begun as a marketing stunt became an artistic necessity, and today recalls Reynolds’ later idea of ambient as a sense of security associated with the feminine. Now the first two albums have been reissued. They take their cue from early Brian Eno and Terry Riley, but reveal a stealthy idyll of their own. On the debut »Silence & Wisdom«, prayer-like spoken word, church-bell and cat purr samples are embedded in a tape-delay-bathed contemplation of shimmering guitars, dim synths and a piano that mimes itself. Even more than on the sequel, childlike impulsive cheerfulness is combined with an enduring mysticism. Is there perhaps an absence of time somewhere between being and becoming? 40 years later, it sounds all the more like there is.
Silence & Wisdom
