Performed on organ and harmonium in various churches around Normandy and then shaped by sound artist Jérôme Bouve, ʻvents dʼaetherʼ is a blustery and sublimely beautiful melange of widescreen environmental recordings and unsettling kaleidoscopic drones that fully stops time. RIYL Florian Fricke, Virginia Astley, FUJI||||||||||TA or Kara-Lis Coverdale.
You should already know that if Dora's involved, things are gonna go off. Because the way she approaches her instrument, whatever that instrument might be, is always so distinct, informed by the way she improvises, channeling elements that aren't obvious. On 'vents d'aether', it's her surroundings as well as the various organs that invisibly shepherd her through the process, seeping into the compositions and mapping out the space for attentive listeners. And that's never more obvious than on the side-long title track, introducing us to the album without pulling any punches. A peal of church bells is joined by Dora's spontaneous, poetic reflections. Dora isn't hampered by some misguided sense of academic rigor; often labeled an outsider, she lets her own rhythm and her own sense of pitch steer the improvisations, not a meticulously overworked concept. And when her voice echoes wordlessly above the wheezing chords, blurred into recordings of winds beating down on wooden shutters, it's as if it's able to pick out the shape of the room itself, inhabiting a space between folk, sound art and sacred music without even trying.
Of course, the other piece of the puzzle here is Bouve, who'd been mulling over the idea of recording in and around the Cotentin Peninsula for years before he met Dora. He was fascinated not just by the organs and harmoniums that were contained in the various chapels and churches of Val de Saire, but the picturesque, rugged coastal landscape and the incidental sounds (seagulls, rushing waters, the omnipresent sea breeze) that often leak into the recordings. So the pair set off in late 2024 and stopped at every venue that would give them access, dubbing hours of improvisations that Bouve would later collage into the album. You can hear their journey unfold like a film; the field recordings aren't used for texture or to grandstand, they help us to perceive what it might feel like to walk from building to building on the coast and how the music might be eroded by sea spray just like the masonry itself. Dora's pitchy drones capture the persistence of the maritime weather, its near-constant noise and enveloping atmosphere and Bouve provides the frame, recording and mixing his elements to situate us in places that may or may not be real, times that bleed into one another.
The result is disorientating but mad charming, a ride out through unfamiliar territory that's spotted by dramatic, outstanding cues that are among Dora's most memorable to date. If you need a quick taste, check the four-minute 'Le Vast XIII', where Dora's warbling tones (modified on the fly by Bouve who works the organ's drawbars) are offset by eerie, waterlogged knocks - it's like being marooned and serenaded all at once.