Angle - Electroacoustic sketches for tender hearts

My encounter with the Anglo-French duo Angle was entirely accidental, and it happened during Sylvain Chaveau's recent tour with Arca.

Irritated at having arrived, as usual, far too early at the venue, I was bracing myself to sit through half an hour of this mysterious band, who were only meant to be the opening act for Arca's tried-and-tested cinematic post-rock, asking nothing more of them. To my utter astonishment, they ended up completely overshadowing their tourmates and becoming the undisputed focus of my admiration.

For the occasion, the duo made up of Andrew Richards on vocals and guitar and Sylvain Closier on bass and electronics, aided by Arca's drummer, performed as a trio, giving depth and physicality to their ethereal, elusive sound, and reinterpreting the songs in versions completely different from those on their CDRs, which I had hungrily bought on the spot.

Silence Is Better Than Nothing, from 2003, is striking right from its title alone, concise and premonitory. Angle's music seems to arrive clothed in discretion, on tiptoe, made of whispers that fade into silence. Delicately slender electronic rhythms bring motion to what otherwise seems like pure dreamlike stasis - a case in point being the Long Fin Killie-esque "I'll Never Let You Sleep", or the opening "The Virus", which alternates electronic patterns with a razor-thin electric guitar hiss that suddenly dissolves into an acoustic guitar arpeggio, almost reshaping the world of Hood. The reference to the Scottish band Long Fin Killie is no accident, since Andrew Richards's way of delivering these songs has something very close, in its intimate, confiding quality, to Luke Sutherland's. "Sugarhorse" is an intensely bright fragment, a small miracle of indietronic lightness laid over pulsing beats and soaring guitar flights, with a commanding bass that, in the finale, conjures up the ghost of New Order.

Angle inhabit that twilight sonic territory whose finest interpreters include bands such as Bark Psychosis and the Notwist of "Neon Golden", representing a kind of middle ground between the two and, in their own way, treating pop material as a vehicle for the purest emotion. But Silent Is Better is a wonderful little box of colourful sonic marbles that never stops surprising, and it can't help but spark genuine astonishment when it offers up a startling, original, muted reworking of the Pixies' "Debaser", of a disarming tenderness, with Aure Bianne's answering vocal. "An Ambient Blackout" is hypnotic in its narcotic movement, a kind of drugged, mutant dub, a strange Dis-like creature caught in the grip of fever. While "L'homme Au Piano" is a nocturnal spell, a sinuous, translucent pop stride worthy of Sea and Cake.

One is left enchanted by the microscopic electroacoustic variations that every so often ripple across the slow, docile flow of this music, sketching ambient landscapes draped in melancholy.

The Toulouse duo's second record dates from 2004, We'll Pick Up The Pieces Next Time, opening with the sinister pulse of "Greeneyesea", with lyrics as spectral and desolate as the music behind them. "…In the end you will destroy your infected electrons/and burn the sick mind that you left in decay". Every movement seems to thin out into a fog, into a cloud of silence no longer streaked by the faint pop rays that, intermittently, had still filtered through the grooves of their previous work.

And resignation to the impossibility of communication between two hearts, along with the resulting sense of frustration, is the pivot of "We're Too Young", a sketch of intimate, searing lyricism, crystallised in a refrain tinged with bitter defeat ("We'll Still Crave The Feeling").

"Sell Your Tose" and "Pedal On By" are fables of post-rock hybrids glazed with indietronica, tracks of crepuscular pop drowned in hours of gloomy afternoons, emotional ups and downs that serve as a prelude to the hypnotic "Photographic", almost as if it were a reinterpretation of Labradford, while "By Proxy" wanders through territory with a distinct Velma flavor.

Andrew's voice confirms itself as one of the most captivating on the current indie scene, with its confidential crooning accompanied by jangling guitar, while the work of his partner Sylvain Closier is on par with that of a skilled engraver of washed-out electronic visions, soft as snow.

Closing We'll Pick Up The Pieces Next Time is "Breakdown", a surge of frothy yet gentle guitar fury, an unexpected swell of electricity that leaves you stunned and seduced, with a promise of fidelity: “Let him go/ let him get to you/ I’ll stay for a while/ and won’t let him get to you”.

The stories Angle whisper to us are stories made of small everyday events, of small common fears and joys, of small miracles, such as meeting by chance on a forum, discovering you live in the same city, and finding yourselves, as if by magic, making music together, sharing hopes, illusions, and nurturing the same dreams. This is what happened to Andrew and Sylvain: rediscovering themselves as kindred spirits.

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