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Hear Benoit Pioulard’s Cavernous, Spiritual ‘Margin’

benoit pioulard, margin, hymnal

Ambient folk auteur Benoît Pioulard (real name: Thomas Meluch) unveils Hymnal — his fourth full-length for Kranky — on March 4, but the one-man band has already offered a peek at “Margin,” a shoegaze strummer off the forthcoming album. The Michigan native fills the cavernous track with guitar soaked in tape hiss and choirboy vocals. As a press release for the upcoming LP notes, the 28-year-old singer wrote Hymnal while he lived in Europe and discoverd that “the ubiquity of religious iconography and grandiose cathedrals became an unexpected muse.” That explains the ethereal track’s grand construction and hushed urgency. The statement continues, “[Meluch] notes a particular preoccupation with the ways that faith offers a sense of solace and belonging in an existence that inherently provides none, framed in a context of tradition, ritual and the notion of the eternal.”

Listen to “Margin” below and then keep scrolling for Hymnal‘s full track list.

Hymnal track list:

1. “Mercy”
2. “Hawkeye”
3. “Reliquary”
4. “Homily”
5. “Excave”
6. “Gospel”
7. “Florid”
8. “Margin”
9. “Censer”
10. “Litiya”
11. “Knell”
12. “Foxtail”