Maibaum – Sumer Is Icumen In
Maibaum (an ancient Germanic ritual to mark the spring) is Quentin Thirionet (Dhavali Giri, Pairi Daeza) and although he has history with improv and live recordings, this is his debut album proper under the name. A celebration of the coming together of “nature and machinery” and drawing from pagan ceremony, contemporary zen, through to digital corruption, Sumer Is Icumen In is New Age music in all of its past, current and future forms simultaneously. Dense and rich, it’s wildly experimental, entirely electronic yet overwhelmingly organic with truly beautiful melodies and a comprehensible narrative.
Hailing from the uncanny valley, the old English folk song “Sumer Is Icumen In” marks the arrival of summer and its language is unsettling as, despite retaining enough modern linguistics to carry meaning today, it remains distant and otherworldly, playing with the “borders of time and perception” in the same way that Thirionet’s album of the same name does. Take “Tellequed’ellemême”, a suite of lapping atmospherics and odd found sounds that sound familiar, but which come with warped edges as if beamed into space and bounced back from some liminal craft that disorientates the stereo receiver.
A mysterious artifact for esoteric consumption now and ripe for rediscovery by interpretative crate-diggers well into the future, Sumer Is Icumen In is transportive, dream-like and steeped in the type of subconscious tradition that will ultimately fuse the consciousness with cybernetics come the singularity. Corrupted ident files chatter amidst insect drones, coming on like time-stretched Windows 95 start-up chimes and the type of windblown ambience that Eno has made a career from.
Vaporwave collages and mournful moaning open up to ASMR passages of scratchy dried leaves/paper, other homemade instrumentation delivering hammer blows by way of percussion. Glitchy loop disintegration and sun-dappled arpeggios merge, while the title-track hops over stepping stones in some rainy Japanese garden, cyber-flute drifting through the bucolic scene like mist, a crescendo of serene synth on “Le Concept De Chien N’Aboie Pas” later closing out the album in as euphoric a sense as New Age has ever been. Sumer Is Icumen In is a never less than fascinating, often quite emotional, and deeply humbling experience.
~Sumer Is Icumen In is out 31st August 2024 via the collaborative efforts of Psychic Sounds, Nonlocal Research, and Kraak.~