This is a re-issue of Martin Rev's 2008 album Les Nymphs, that was the first album he made solely on computer, using computer generated off the shelf sounds, rather than lots of outboard gear. As one of the earliest adopters of Synths in the early 70's with Suicide it's great that he is still pushing forwards. This album is influenced by the Greek mythology Martin had been reading in French while living in Montreal.
The album opens with Sophie Eagle the first of Martin's Nymphs, this has squelchy bass tones, a disembodied piano part, that shifts about against the repeating synth sample, with every once in a while, whispered indistinct vocals.
Narcisse opens with ringing bells and keyboards, before the club beats come in, to give this a laid-back dancefloor edge to it, this is in the piano house vein, the vocals are as minimal as possible.
Triton opens like a Chemical Brothers dancefloor smash, only instead of block rocking beats, we get off backwards sounding synths, with distorted bass figures.
Venise has a slinky gauzy feel with vocoder style vocals, as well as Martins super minimal vocals, this is gently intoxicating like Daft Punk, it would sound great on a huge club sound system.
Valley of The Butterfly opens with sci-fi space noises shifting tonally, cartoon vocal interjections from nursery rhymes about the plague, with assorted other weird snatches of dialogue.
Les Nymphs Et La Mer has rushing water sounds, transformed into tremulous synth overload, with a repeating loop centering everything, as it builds outer space cartoon flight noises join the mix.
Dragonfly has a simple repeating pattern, like the Dragonfly circling around above you, once in a while falling out of time.
Phaetone is the most Suicide like of the tunes on the album, to begin with, with a full-on motoric beat, vocals in the Alan Vega style, super speedy techno, that breaks apart, into weird interludes, going someplace else, as the tune descends it becomes more ambient.
Nyx has a Yacht rock sample with lush techno around it, like it's the soundtrack to a 21st century porno, where all the characters look like they belong in Steely Dan.
Daphne sounds like she's the head of a cybercrime unit, this is the theme song to her show, as the squelchy bass and keyboards gets going, we see Daphne deep diving on multiple computer screens, in the endless search for those elusive bot masters.
Cupid is deep house techno weirdness with a propulsive beat to shimmy across that dancefloor towards your very own cupid.
Deep Temple is dark soulful house with an almost exercise routine beat so you can do Zumba to it, alongside one word occasionally to enervate, as you all exercise in unison.
The album closes with To Vow keeps us dancing in the gym or on the dancefloor, this is almost tribal house, the vocals whisper in your ears, coming at you from all directions.
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