Anatole Muster

There are two viable ways to introduce the second album by accordionist Anatole Muster — though, as will soon become clear, the label barely does him justice. One is to get lost in a thicket of more or less esoteric tags — from new age to hyperpop, via utopian virtual, digital fusion, folktronica. The other is to cut straight to the point: the singular emotional states this music evokes. It’s precisely the pull of those sensations that allows "Hopecore" to speak even to listeners who usually keep contemporary electronic offshoots at arm’s length. In reality, the two paths don’t cancel each other out. They’re both worth taking — starting with the first.

Not all intensity comes from darkness: when light opens onto rich, continuous emotional states, held in balance

Decades of glorifying inner abysses have convinced much of the non-mainstream crowd that darkness is the ultimate form of emotional expression. "Hopecore" arrives as a quiet rebuttal to that fixation, showing how luminous tones can resonate just as deeply — sometimes even more so — without being weighed down. Put like this, it might sound like a solemn manifesto, but solemnity is probably the last thing on the mind of the 24-year-old Swiss musician. What draws him instead are lighter emotional states — not because they’re flimsy or shallow, but because they’re settled, suspended, almost aeriform. In balance with the surrounding world.

If the mood isn’t clear yet, just hit play on the opening track, “Just Another Step”. A rough accordion intro in the low register, then an immediate pivot toward smoother surfaces: an open, relaxed vocal line moving high, shimmering MIDI arpeggios that — consciously or not — echo the timeless calm of Christopher Cross’s “Sailing”. A key change upward, a slight pullback, a constant swaying between momentum and stillness. All condensed into one minute and forty seconds.

Accordion and software form a single system — an interface for moving through calm without freezing it

With “Frisbee”, drums enter the picture and the album leans into jazz-fusion territory — or rather, digital fusion, given the pervasiveness of hyper-polished synthetic sounds. The bass is full and funk-driven, while the rest of the palette plays with deliberately artificial, fluted, ultra-clean timbres. Muster controls this digital ecosystem directly from his button accordion, using remapping software that turns keys and bellows into an interface for a shifting multitude of sounds. Which is why it’s hardly surprising to find him on YouTube “playing” a laptop keyboard as if it were an accordion, achieving the exact same sonic result.

The album moves naturally between songs and instrumentals, between moments where rhythm takes center stage and others — most of them — where it emerges more subtly, through the interweaving of acoustic and electronic parts. That’s the case with “M Field Music”, where guest Matthew Field’s guitar locks in with millimetric precision, tracing segmented, delicate, luminous figures: math without the genre’s usual sharp edges. Halfway between opposites sits “Skydog”, which starts as a gentle 3/4 lullaby and only in the chorus — and in a very brief accordion solo — lets a near-breakcore percussive sequence surface, without ever losing its diffuse sense of grace.

New age resurfaces through contemporary materials, without nostalgia or friction

This music, nourished by calm and understated stylistic fusion, has had a name for a long time: new age. Muster’s version, though, feels like a fresh recomposition, combining familiar elements of the tradition with decisively new ones, while avoiding any collage effect. It’s easy to catch glimpses of Wim Mertens’s or Michael Nyman’s clear-lined minimalism — perhaps filtered through Yann Tiersen’s folk inflections — in “I’ve Never Missed A Plane”, a perfect two-minute sketch. The accordion ripples lightly across octaves, intertwining with flute and MIDI guitar to build an open, gently melancholic atmosphere. Unemphatic, carefully keeping chiaroscuro from tipping into sadness.

Broken rhythms and vocal fragments instead animate “All My Friends Love Memories”, driven by the hyperkinetic drumming of guest Varra — a name to watch in that hyper-fusion zone where Louis Cole has already left a mark (and who also appeared on the previous "Wonderful Now"). On “Hope Walk”, the drums become almost particulate: a dense trail of micro-hits accompanying the light movements of the synths and the melody of vocalist Amelia Rose. The result is a slightly shaded tenderness, brushing up against the melodic legacy of Mediterranean dance — a Gigi D’Agostino slow burn, but also the nostalgic, sunlit lines of Romanian trance à la Edward Maya — filtered through an intimate lens. Music that keeps a trace of shadow only to make the light shine brighter.

A welcoming virtual utopia, where artifice sharpens emotion

Just beneath the surface, "Hopecore" also engages with a specific offshoot of the vapor imaginary: its “utopian virtual” variant, where new age and commercial ambient resurface through MIDI timbres and a deliberately naïve digital aesthetic. Almost a return to the candid futurist enthusiasm of the early Nineties — a digital world not to be unmasked, but inhabited as a space of freedom capable of expanding emotional range. This, together with the radiant emotional pull of the melodies, is where the album resonates with hyperpop too — at least in the gentler, more disarmed version offered by Italian artist Faccianuvola.

Beyond labels, "Hopecore" proves that exposure can run just as deep as concealment. The richness of its interlocking parts doesn’t complicate the sound; it generates a vibrating surface instead — a visible architecture that releases its emotional density through brightness. Music that doesn’t dig into murk, but offers itself to the gaze. Light, yes — never empty.

(English version created with AI-assisted translation)

30/12/2025