Snooze

The French electronic music scene is often characterised as a buoyant one, but much of what emerges washes over the listener without leaving an indelible mark. Snooze, the moniker for Beirut-born multi-instrumentalist Dominique Dalcan, released Snooze as a follow-up to his 1997 aural debut, The Man In The Shadow. Dalcan maintains his love for cinema-oriented orchestration by incorporating rich, echo-filled instrumentation with sampled beats. There are plenty of cool, mellow moments where a flugelhorn, organ or double-bass takes over and allows Dalcan to play with intricate textures. Unlike his debut, however, he is experimenting with pop sensibilities here, with the help of vocalists Deborah Brown, Nancy Danino and Nicole Graham, amongst others. With this, he taps into a particularly French pop feel that is both sweet and melancholic all at once. "Quiet Alone" and "Did I Give You Much?" are pop jewels that promise to shine but only tease with a glimmer. When he isn't venturing into pop territory, Dalcan plays with house-techno grooves in tracks such as "Snooze For Beginners" and "It's More Expensive For This," and then strips it all down for some dub techno on "Beat Box Business." Dalcan's love for what critics call "aural film noir" is definitely present here. However, the experiments are not adventurous in any sense. Cinematic Orchestra's Jason Swinscoe takes us to those places and the melancholy that runs throughout this release was powerfully present in the groundbreaking songs of the Cranes, or even the perfect dance tunes of the Pet Shop Boys.