The Uncertain Trail

Lena is the dub incarnation of Mathias Delplanque, last encountered three years ago with Floating Roots on Quatermass. He returns in darker mood with a collection of odds and ends from the last couple of years, more distracted by the phlegmier depths of hip hop and the nether world of abstract breaks this time but still lugubriously and luxuriously deep, especially on the opener Entomodub 1 Remix that links directly back to previous efforts with its 'like Billy the Kid' patois inflected interjections – sounds like Scratch. And as the album moves on there's a growing detachment from directly identifiable dub foundations to more experimental, less 'grounded', work. Black Sifichi's Burroughsian slurred half-lit raps are always a welcome distraction and he works best here on Typewriter Ribbon (Liquid Paper Mix), instrumentally sounding like Tom Waits in dub – an enticing proposition. The Ghislain Poirer collaboration Saint-Urbain is definitely a bad headed slow motion stroll at dawn down those wet big city cobbled streets as the garbage collection trucks start their day. There's a reproduction of an Ed Ruscha painting for the album's cover, Monsieur Deplanque has admirable pretensions.

On the Wire Radio (may 2007)

Some weeks I ago I encountered the name Mathias Delplanque for the first time. He created a nice CD of heavily processed recordings of silence in various rooms. Back then (Vital Weekly 560) I didn't know that much about Delplanque, but he also works in such guises as Bidlo, Stensil and Lena, when not under his own name and he has released works on Quartermass, Harmsonic, Mondes Elliptiques, Low Impendance, Arbouse and others. So by request of Soundsaround here is his third album as Lena, and it's good to see he choose a different when playing different music. Because Lena is indeed different. Dub with the big D-U-B, complete with toasting sound and probably made in a highly digital fashion. The whole digi-dub wave that flooded the market about a decade ago is washed ashore, and reggae is of course big as ever, in it's own corner. It's possible to link Lena to Jan Jelinik or any such ~scape artist, but his sound is closer to the roots (always mention the word 'roots' in reviews like this) of the real stuff, not in the least place because of the singers that he invited to play along. According to the label it's more dark than his previous releases as Lena, which of course I can't vouch for, but Lena plays a tune or two that is indeed much darker than usual. 'Big city paranoia' music or some such, I could all too easily think. I like this very much and realize that I don't listen to as much of this kind of music as I would like to. But at the same hand I also must admit that not every track here is as strong as the first few opening pieces. In the mid range of the album there are a couple of tracks that are a bit too regular, and too easily made, but throughout, I must say I am quite pleased with it, and it's about time to dig out the Incoming! label or Zion Train CDs, which are somewhere collecting dust.

vitalweekly (may 2007)

"The Uncertain Trail" on Sounds Around. Google them. This is the future of dub. Deep, speculative, well-grounded and yet incredibly rich, full-bodied and not a hint of returning to roots [cliches] like so many modern dub units. This is definitely dub one step beyond into jazz and avant electronica. Highly recommended"

Radio Patapoe - Amsterdam (june 2007)

“Ach zwei Seelen wohnen in meiner Brust”, Faust exclaimed in the Goethe play named after him, complaining about the two-sided nature of his personality. Mathias Delplanque could probably relate. In his releases as a member of the “Missing Ensemble” and in his work as a solo artist, which has been featured in museums and installations worldwide, he has established a reputation as a musician with an open sense for creative experimentation and a talent for building demanding drones. With his project Lena, which celebrates its fifth aniversary this year, however, he is off into entirely different territory: Dub is the keyword here and the mood is warm and inviting. Is this Delplanque's popular valve to release the tension from stretching art to its limits?

What people often forget when they are enveloped by the deep, sonorous bass lines and softly echoing guitar splinters of Dub is that this was once the most progressive music imagineable and has remained at the forefront through its subsequent reincarnations in some click n cuts-offshoots and drum n bass. Delplanque is aware of this legacy and in his understanding, dub is not just a slower or skeletised version of Reggae, but a technique of stripping music of all of its irrelevant parameters and replacing harmony and melody with more sound-oriented components, such as reverb and delay. His aesthetical proximity to the Berlin-based ~scape label, which was the navel of the world for a short, but intense summer a few years ago, has been somewhat exagerated, but you hardly need a course in history to understand these comparisons after the first few seconds of the “Entomodub 1” remix which opens “The Uncertain Trail”: Magnetic cracklings, sizzlings and crunchings are alligned by a sluggish tractor beam groove and what would usually be a background effect aimed at proving more depth now takes centerstage to push the piece forward. On the other hand, Lena does not end there and this album is really to be understood as the diary and travel log of a man who has made the highway his home. Compiled over years spent in France, Canada, the USA and India, it brims with the tension of different ethnicities peacefully running into each other on crowded market places, dances to an accordion played on the corners of Paris and jumps up at the shreeks of a mobile phone ringing in Bombay. And yet, Delplanque cares less for using locally recorded samples, but for amalgamating everything into flickering street scenes: There is a universal urban coolness, which runs through all of these tracks and which is reflected by the purity of Ed Ruscha's painting, which graces the album's cover.

Despite its more accessible surface, “The Uncertain Trail” is never in opposition to Delplanque's experimental work. Drones and flowing layers of electric particles are omnipresent and “Nizamuddin Station” even uses extracts from a collaboration with David Sanson performed at the “Musee Juste pour Rire” in Montreal. Rather than his soul being torn in two, Mathias Delplanque has constructed Lena as an ideal vehicle to complement his sound art and to express his personality in full.

By Tobias Fischer

tokafi (july 2007)