July 22, 2022 - Self-released
We can visually read an image of a landscape fast. In a fraction of a second. That visual language is everywhere all at once. It’s primal. Tech knows. Our desktops and laptops deliver fresh vistas constantly for our viewing pleasure in the background of our screens as we sit at our desks and type our spreadsheets and emails. It’s an aspiration for those of us who are desk-bound—look at this mountain you are climbing, your work is important.
It’s easy to forget about the long-standing tradition of musicians who make art about landscapes. I think this has to do with speedreading and how it relates to the modern condition. Even sped up or skipped around, you can’t experience a song in a fraction of a second—it takes a minute or two to get it.
French music producer oppidum has a creative practice that explores impressionist storytelling. oppidum’s project Vignemale is like a mountaineer’s travel journal full of musings, scratched down in a moment on the mountainside, then typed up in a format we can read—or, in this case, bop our heads along to. These six instrumental electronic sketches speak their melodies in minor keys, with acoustic stringed instruments and synthesizers over dance beat tracks. They have a rich, spacious atmosphere thanks to field recordings oppidum took while hiking up Vignemale mountain in the Pyrenees. These tracks aren’t short, but they do seem short because they leave you wanting a little more. Fleeting like the sunlight, they enter, they shine, then they leave.
I personally love concept albums like this that are built from a specific experience. Making art takes a hunger for putting yourself into situations where you don’t know the outcome, even if you never leave your house. In this case, oppidum has given us a set of epic songs about an epic journey to “meet a mountain” (his words). The gift he’s sharing here is a glimpse of that work many of us can’t know. He has followed danger and conquered it with nothing more than the body and the lizard brain to care for it when conditions are raw. Highlights include the Latin heartbeat of ‘Murmuration’, the act of watching power in slow motion in ‘le torrent,’ namesake ‘Vingemale’ of course, and finally, the all-around Bollywood-esque melodic riffs throughout that command a larger-than-life presence in your eardrums, telling a story that can’t be ignored.
oppidum’s Vingemale is as entertaining as it is serious, an expressive electro soundtrack that was retroactively written, downtempo and delicious. Cheers to many more mountains beyond mountains. ☔