*75 copies limited edition* "Outwardly active in France's experimental music scene since a few years, Arnica Montana elegantly opens her discography with her first physical release, Placebo Music. Recorded in Nice, on the Côte d'Azur, this tape reflects - in the artist own's words - the boredom and suspended time of the region, the strange dystopian atmosphere of those cities, the mountains, the rhythm of the waves, and of the peculiar slowness that seems to permeate the landscape.


With her little world of oscillators and hand-patched circuits, she pays homage to the West Coast modular synthesis tradition. On the A-side, three pieces are composed with her own DIY synthesizers, that she affectionately gives crazily mischievous names such as Astrid 1312 aka Astrid ACAB. The B-side features a single extended studio piece recorded on a Serge synthesizer, unfolding as an immersive exploration of texture and timbre of the machine. Yet, Placebo Music is far from being a record made solely for devoted nerds of DIY hardware forums; while rooted in the experimental world of modular electronics, Arnica Montana's music skillfully balances technical curiosity with an overall fragile atmosphere.


The album operates by blurring the line between noise and ambient, between abrasion and hypnosis. Beyond her West Coast lineage (Suzanne Ciani, Morton Subotnick...), one might sense distant affinities with the American East Coast scene, around New York’s Lovely Music Ltd. and their alumnis such as David Behrman, Pauline Oliveros, or Robert Ashley. But from her very own French Côte d'Azur, Placebo Music quietly tells its own story, of a landscape impression shaped by machine improvisation, where it unfolds as a slow listening experience that never forgets to leave space for playfulness." - Tom Val