Camille
Music Hole
EMI


Camille caught a bit of attention in 2006 for Ta Douleur, and the year following for the Australian release of its album of origin, 'Le Fil' - a somewhat experimental album which used a gentle, monotone drone to connect each of the songs. In reality, most of the songs still followed a fairly predictable structure, even if they made impressive use of Camille's voice. Her third album and first English language release, 'Music Hole', feels much freer than 'Le Fil' did. The vocal experiments are still there - Camille layers her voice over itself, babbles, squeals, mumbles and shouts - but by shedding the avant-garde concepts she subsequently sounds much freer than she has at any point in the past, and 'Music Hole' becomes an exciting exploration of a variety of styles of music.

This is apparent from the first seconds of Gospel With No Lord, the opening track. It sounds like gospel, as the title would suggest - albeit filtered through Camille's unmistakable French accent - but the rapid whispering that opens the track and the male beatboxing gives it a much more abstract feel. On Canards Sauvages, Camille's breathy babbling is mingled with the rhythmic splashing of water. On the haunting, operatic track The Monk, Camille sheds lyrics altogether, using little more than a piano to back her as she alternates between eerie sighs and gentle humming. Cats and Dogs draws on Camille's entire band as well as a group of guests (including Jamie Cullum, it has to be said) to provide a plethora of animal sounds as Camille meanders through a theatrical tune about the human fascination with animal companions. Immediately after is the fantastic Money Note, whose baseline is the sound of coins and the repeated whispering of the words 'rich bitch'. It's effectively as close to a dance track as the album gets, if you can imagine the beeps that punctuate a dance track being replaced with Camille's voice.

With such a diverse range of styles filling 11 tracks, an album would normally sound scattered. However, since Camille's own voice still does most of the work, this is not the case - and if there's difficulty in working out what style she does best, that's probably because it's all done well. The experiments here are exciting and unique, and they mark this as the prolific French artist's most impressive work to date.

Brian O'Neill