Standard In-Fi, one of our absolute favorite labels currently working away in France, sets the pace of 2024 with two absolute stunners from the country's underground scene; Johana Beaussart’s “Legendes de Chiens Hirsutes”, a hauntingly beautiful excursion into conceptually framed experimental vocalizations and sparse instrumentation, and Faune’s double LP, “Des Fant ô mes”, a truly intoxicating gesture of folk infused droning, experimentalism. Rooted in deep histories, while presenting expanses of creative sonority that are entirely of this moment and forward thinking, given Standard In-Fi's stellar curatorial track record, it'll come as no surprise that these are two of the most striking records to have crossed our path this year.

Over the course of the last decade, Standard In-Fi has taken on the task of illuminating some of the most exciting currents of underground music. With a carefully curated catalog, specialising in material from across a vast range of fields - drone, field recordings, traditional, experimental, and rock - they’ve issued some seriously incredible LPs by Alexis Degrenier, Omerta, Tanz Mein Herz, France, and numerous others, and rapidly risen to become a label to watch.

Born in 1989, Johana Beaussart’s background lays in the contexts of fine art, initially film and animation before being drawn toward the creative potential and complex meanings carried by the human voice. For much of her career, the Paris based artist’s output has remained within a practice more closely aligned with performative action and sound art, focusing on orality, the structures of discourses that feed a collective memory and a history of speech, illusion, imitation, and appearance. In 2021 this research led into the realm of musicality via a collaborative duo with the violinist Anais Ponty, with Silo issuing the LP, “Otium”, documenting the project, in 2022. Last year then bore witness to her further embracing a conceptual rendering of music with Kolokoksta, a “space opera”, incorporating sound design, sound effects, imaginary languages, soundscapes, lyrical singing and electronic music, that was conceived to be presented in cinemas.

Beaussart’s latest, “Legendes de Chiens Hirsutes” - her first working with the venerable Standard In-Fi - ventures further down the path plumbed by its predecessor, the product of two years of rigorous work that culminates as an audio sci-fi adventure, built into distinct, thrilling chapters. While “Legendes de Chiens Hirsutes”, and Beaussart’s work in general, can not be disassociated from a long history of experimental vocal practice - Joan La Barbara, Moniek Darge, Jaap Blonk, etc. - tapping into phonic and primal expressions of the human voice, when viewed for the totality of its elements, it arguably presents a stranger relation to the work of artists like Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk (and at the outside Katalin Ladik). Not only does it coexist within and refer to multiple creative frameworks, but its experimentalism often also refers to a sense of musicality that refers to the popular realm.

Across the length of the two sides of “Legendes de Chiens Hirsutes”, Beaussart weaves a fascinating sense of narrative and abstract meaning from a varying palette of phonic utterances, spoken text, field recordings / ambient, found sounds, processing, percussion, and synthesis. While each track feels free-standing and autonomous, often working in sharp counterpoint to its immediate companions, the totality of the album equally presents a seamless whole, working cohesively together with a bizarre sense of operatic drama that ebbs and flows, ranging from lush, infectiously musical moments comprising dreamy layered vocals - sung, uttered, spoken - within a bed of moody synths, to moments of manipulated vocals, textual ambient recording, and a great deal more.

An absolutely engrossing listen, telling a story the explicit meaning of which remains just out of reach while managing to transmit something subjectively clear and concrete, Johana Beaussart’s “Legendes de Chiens Hirsutes” represents the emergence of a truly unique voice into the musical landscape that can’t be missed.

Active for more than a decade, Faune - the duo of Guilhem Lacroux (Toad, La Baracande, Tanz Mein Herz) playing guitar and lapsteel and Jacques Puech (Jericho, Duo Puech-Gourdon ) on vocals, bagpipes, shruti box, and glass harmonica - is no stranger to the loose community that orbits around Standard In-Fi. Of the four previous releases the project has issued since 2013, half have been on the label.

Faune belongs to a fascinating, broader current / movement of experimental musicians working across Europe - Lise Barkas, Alexis Degrenier, Luster, Jessica Bailiff, Roxane Métayer, Soccer Committee, Annelies Monseré, etc. - who trance into the ancient, regional folk traditions that are rooted in the areas where they are based. While at first glance this creative root might feel incongruous and unexpected, once heard the deep resonance between elements of folk music and those of experimental music can’t be overlooked.

Faune’s latest with Standard In-Fi, “Des Fant ô mes” (roughly translating to Ghosts), is their most expansive and ambitious release to date, comprising thirteen stunning entirely acoustic works across a double LP. It also encounters both of its artists embracing an expanded palette of instrumentation, with Lacroux, in addition to guitar, also playing bowls, harmonium, zither, various objects, fretless banjo, harmonica, etc., and Puech incorporating harmonium, bells, gong, and fife, in addition to his longstanding work on vocals and glass harmonica.

Because of its balance at the junctures of folk experimentalism and the make up and use of its material elements, Faune’s “Des Fant ô mes” sits slightly beyond the ease of categorisation, but will inevitably resonate with fans of projects like Pelt, Incredible String Band, Third Ear Band, Aktuala, Futuro Antico, etc. - who split a similar set of reference points. It is an album rooted in drone / long tones, a method of musical composition heavily aligned with experimental music, but with an even longer presence in numerous traditions of folk; a tension that presents itself as far from accidental. Into this root element, Lacroux and Puech weave a startling sense of rhythmic elements, balladic singing, cycling, repetitive arpeggios, and vast textural interventions that riddle between harmonic resonance and atonality.

From elegant acapella and throbbingly hypnotic passages at the borders of psychedelic folk and prog, to extended textural passages of a more experimental temperament, Faune’s “Des Fant ô mes” is a thrilling immersion into the potential of acoustic exploration that taps something ancient and fundamental while appearing entirely of this moment and forward thinking. Once again, Standard In-Fi has knocked it out of the park.