Hylozoists : La Fin du Monde
The Hylozoists are a tricky herd to spot. They roam across the musical landscape, and you can never quite set them in one stylistic region. In the short span of an album, namely La Fin Du Monde, they can shape-shift into thousands of wispy connotations that can hardly be identified as anything definite. Like Carbon, The Hylozoists never change at the most basic level, but can produce many different structures like diamond, graphite, and something called a buckyball.
The Hylozoists, for the most part, was an idea stirred by Nova Scotia Producer Paul Aucoin who wanted to combine his classical music education with something that was enjoyable for everyone. It took a little bit to get going, having many things to focus on, but eventually, Aucoin banded together with people from The Weakerthans, FemBots, and Cuff the Duke to bring the Hylozoists into actuality. Using some relatively neglected instruments in pop music today, such as glockenspiels, vibraphones, violas, and an organ, the Hylozoists released the diaphanous La Fin Du Monde.
The first track on the album, “The Fifty Minute Hour,” seems just as out of grasp as the title, combining odd sensations of a wedding march, a circus, and a Bond film. “Smiley Smiley” presents visions of cartoon ghosts in mansions on a hill, while “Strait is the Gate” comes in triumphantly like graduation at the end of a teen movie. “Hearts and Harps” vocals have an enormous impact on the feel of the song, in some ways making it seem like the contemplative song for the heroine of a musical. The most radical departure from all preset notions is the title song, where some rather inarticulate men speak theory about the end of the world, suggesting that it is not the end, but the beginning of something different.
The gossamer of La Fin Du Monde is an enigmatic fusion of classical composition and contemporary pop mentality. It can be a boon or a bane to the listener. If the listener is active, imparting his own connotations and feelings onto the music, it can be a new experience on every listen, but if the listener sits idly waiting for the Hylozoists to give them something to feel, then they’re going to be left in the dark.
Similar Albums:
Tortoise – TNT
Air – Talkie Walkie
Do Make Say Think – & Yet & Yet
Download at
