Reviews

Luminous Dash

French artist Arnaud Castagné , better known as Memory Scale , continues his musical explorations with Chapter Five , his fifth studio album and the third released on Audiobulb Records. The album is a deeply atmospheric and melodic journey, weaving the rich textures of ambient music with elements of 90s IDM, krautrock and electronica.

Drawing influences from the likes of Brian Eno , Boards of Canada , Seefeel and Dieter Moebius, Chapter Five showcases Castagné’s ability to honour his inspirations while creating a distinctive style all his own. The album exudes a cinematic feel, with each track unfolding like a scene from a film, with soundscapes enhanced by subtle, expressive instrumentation.

Chapter Five ’s soundscape is both diverse and coherent. Dense ambient layers form the basis for melodies that subtly emerge and disappear, as if moving with a current. Familiar sounds of instruments such as the Wurlitzer and Rhodes keyboards bring a warm, nostalgic dimension to the electronic soundscapes, while the processed bass guitar offers an organic counterpart to the digital production.

Castagné masterfully plays with silence and space as compositional elements, enhancing the emotional impact of the music. This interplay between sound and silence creates a meditative atmosphere, inviting listeners to fully immerse themselves in the experience.

Chapter Five is full of images and emotions that erupt in the listener. Whether it’s the feeling of wandering through a faded memory or exploring unknown spaces, the album offers an open canvas for personal interpretation. This music invites you to pause, reflect and deeply empathize.

The album was recorded and mixed at Splank Studio in Bordeaux, France, with a remarkable attention to detail. The mastering, carried out by Volume Objects, gives the music a refined depth without affecting the subtlety of the compositions.
Chapter Five is a strong addition to Memory Scale's discography, combining technical excellence with emotional depth. It is an album that must be experienced in its entirety to fully appreciate its contemplative qualities. For lovers of ambient and experimental electronic music , Chapter Five is a must-have, and a confirmation of Memory Scale's status in the genre.

Original > HERE

Chain D.L.K.

From the ambient-laden shores of Bordeaux comes "Chapter Five", the latest chapter in Memory Scale’s ongoing exploration of electronic landscapes. French composer Arnaud Castagné, under his moniker Memory Scale, crafts a vivid sound world that feels both nostalgic and forward-looking, like leafing through an old photo album while dreaming of the future. This release, his third with Audiobulb Recordings, is a subtle yet expansive journey into ambient and IDM territory, blending the personal with the cosmic.

True to its description as an “imaginary soundtrack”, "Chapter Five" plays like a score to a movie that only exists in your mind. Each track is a scene, complete with texture-rich backdrops and delicately unfolding narratives. Castagné’s signature is his ability to seamlessly blend 90s IDM influences with warm, organic touches, such as the unmistakable tones of Wurlitzer and Rhodes keyboards, and the earthy presence of bass guitar.

The result is an album that oscillates between lush density and contemplative minimalism. It invites introspection, occasionally laced with moments of quiet euphoria. Fans of artists like Boards of Canada, Seefeel, and The Durutti Column will feel at home here, yet there’s a uniqueness to Memory Scale’s sound that resists simple comparison.

From Cosmic Echoes to Earthly Whispers, there are some proper highlights. "Causes & Effects" opens the album with a gentle ripple of tones, building a sense of anticipation. It’s like stepping into a dimly lit cinema, waiting for the first frame to flicker to life. "Sense Data (Prelude)" and its full-length counterpart, "Sense Data", form the album’s cerebral core. The interplay of melodic motifs and shimmering textures evokes the cerebral yet emotional pull of Brian Eno’s ambient masterpieces. "Afternoon’s Echoes" feels like sunlight breaking through a canopy of leaves - both grounding and transcendent. The processed bass guitar and the pipe organ here lend a subtle, almost tactile resonance.

"The Armillary Sphere We All Need" is a standout, its title as evocative as its music. The track is a swirling dance of harmony and rhythm, reminiscent of Dieter Moebius’s more melodic experiments. Closing with "Life Density", the album leaves us with a sense of completion - a perfect resolution to its cinematic arc.

What sets Memory Scale apart is his ability to balance the digital sheen of IDM with the warm imperfection of analogue elements. Tracks like "Crystal Ride" demonstrate this beautifully, with their shimmering synth lines underpinned by a steady, organic pulse. The use of silence and space throughout the album - what Castagné calls “playing with silences and pauses” - is masterful, lending the music a contemplative depth.

Memory Scale’s influences are as eclectic as they are evident: the emotional weight of Brian Eno, the textural play of Seefeel, and the rhythmic intricacy of Tortoise all find echoes here. But "Chapter Five" doesn’t rest on homage. Instead, it builds on these foundations, creating something deeply personal and unmistakably modern.

The title itself - "Chapter Five" - hints at continuity and progression. It’s as if each album in Memory Scale’s discography represents another page in an unfolding story, one that invites listeners to immerse themselves fully.

For fans of ambient electronica, IDM, and cinematic soundscapes, this is a must-listen. And for those new to Memory Scale, this fifth chapter is the perfect place to begin your journey.

Original > HERE

Musique Machine

Memory Scale (aka Arnaud Castagné from Bordeaux, FR) has crafted a pretty unique take on the ambient genre in his Chapter Five, a new album composed of twelve tracks that are really, for lack of a better term, songs. This is part of what makes this work unique, for the structure and internal momentum present within each composition certainly moves, in a developmental way, toward a horizon, wherever that is. To be fair, any music does by virtue of its durational character, but the movement I mean here is formal, built into the internal tensions within each song.
Memory Scale's toolkit is a familiar one – synth and the occasional electric instrument – even if the resulting music isn't, elegantly straddling genres from the quiet, atmospheric moments of post-rock to the ephemera of IDM. The electric bass on tracks like "Afternoon's Echoes" is round and full, pressing into the space around it as well as any of the aforementioned genre's might have done pre-Ableton. The opening tracks on Chapter Five, "Causes & Effects" into "Syntropy", meld seamlessly with one another, creating both the album's mood as well as its setting, the latter of which is sorely lacking in current ambient offerings, too often written by impatient, attention-hungry acts in a rush to get somewhere. Well, it is clear that Castagné knows that listeners have to want to enter a setting before moving toward its horizon. 
 
Fans of 90s ambient works, as well as post-rock acts like Labradford and Tortoise, will find much on Chapter Five worth a listen or two. Others, who are curious about the formlessness of ambient electronica becoming something like a song, or dare I say, a concept album, can take Chapter Five for a new (or old) and reliable point of orientation.

Original > HERE

Monolith Cocktail

A sensory appeal of time, place, geometry and the spherical orbits of the cosmos permeate this latest sophisticated offering from the Bordeaux residing artist Memory Scale, otherwise known as the guise of one Arnaud Castagné. Measured complexities are suffused with a rich and subtle palette of IDM, Kosmische, electronic and most notably ambient inspirations; channelling at any one-time echoes of Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Boards of Canada, Eno, Seefeel, Speedy J, Ash Ra, Jarre and Peter Michael Hamel as the synthesized merges seamlessly with elements of effected guitar and the stained glass lit sounds of an organ and the lightened bulb noted Rhodes.

But even within that scope of influences, I can hear something approaching a more sedate paced track “#7” from the Aphex Twins’ Ambient Works Vol.2 on the windy synth breathing and atmospheric lead-in ‘Causes & Effects’, the kind of synth bass you’d hear on an 80s cult samurai soundtrack and the supernatural retro feels of Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein on the crisp crackled surface sounded and deep ‘A Late Reading’, and a both playful atom spirograph and roulette wheeled movement of 90s Warp roster mavericks on the obscured transmission ‘Epicycloid’. Altogether a quality of depth, feelings and softly prompted suggestions of various attuned and attentive musical instruments, of ruminating thought processes, and the historical instruments that measured celestial bodies of our universe.  

From the crystalized to the translucent the fantastical and moody, many bases are covered on a work that would suit a soundtrack of recalled and oblique memories.  

As that title denotes, this is the fifth album, and third for the unassuming Audiobulb Records label, and it’s a classy, cerebral but emotionally drawn experience that borders on the filmic, the magical, more reflective and near haunted. A truly immersive experience.

Original > HERE

Etherreal

True to Audiobulb and to the digital format only, Memory Scale nevertheless evolves its musical style, seeking out 8-bit or slightly 80's oriented sounds (like the visual accompanying this long-format, and its big foam die hanging from the central rearview mirror of a car), with some characteristic synth rises ( Syntropy ) and melodic suites benefiting from a treatment between cotton wool and bubblegum . As on And All Things Begin To Drift , appreciated a year and a half ago, we find this impression of hearing, in places, notes with a poorly adjusted pitch , with a slightly "drooling" rendering, which, in the end, ends up constituting a style specific to the Bordeaux artist and which we therefore welcome as such, with less circumspection than before.

But, quite quickly, the Frenchman abandons these motifs to head towards less dated shores, and less rhythmic as well. Thus, when guitar and keyboard are more put forward ( Sense Data ), we recognize this form on the border of an electronic post-rock that Arnaud Castagné masters rather well. The subject can also head towards less rich orchestrally, but more complex lands, with a few vocal snippets in the background and a general fragmentation of the components ( Epicycloid ). More surprisingly, Mémory Scale also knows how to evolve in a register close to the ballad with caressing electric guitar, played in the bass ( The Armillary Sphere We All Need ), or accompanied by electric piano sounds with slightly old-fashioned accents but which give a certain feeling of space ( Pluto / Léo ).

Original > HERE

Inactuelles

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Rockerilla