Upon first hearing fragment. on the split / collaboration with Iroha entitled Bittersweet, I began a search for more to hear from this seemingly enigmatic French solo artist because the contributions to said record piqued my interest; but finding recorded material to listen to proved somewhat problematic, and then Home showed up in my mailbox with no real explanation as to why or how it actually made it to my hands (and my memory regarding the whole happening has faded into a personal obscurity).
Taken by itself, Home is a beauteous movement of sound more akin to a sun shower on a summer’s afternoon than an exercise in loud metallic tinged music, and even at its heaviest points, both parts of Home (both of the tracks seem to be part of a whole really as they are called “Home I” and “Home II”) sound immensely uplifting; taken in context of what else is going on in music, fragment. shows a firm grasp of the style of music that is being plowed by Jesu and that is not to say that this record is just a cheap knock off or imitation although it is certainly derivative. Still, both of these songs are just the ticket for people obsessed with the style and looking for more of it while the progenitor is off doing other things because both “Home I” and “Home II” are well executed songs of shimmering sound that caress and cajole your ears making for a chilled out but still beefy sounding listening experience.
While fragment. might not be breaking new ground on Home, the artist certainly shows off his talent and also serves proof that this style of music is potentially capable of having several artists play in the sandbox offering good records and excellent entries to the table with different takes on similar sounds; writing off this record because of its indebtedness to another group or musician would not only be criminal but also short sighted. Give Home a listen, and you might just be pleasantly surprised by what you here.
