Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux are back with their second collaborative album following the acclaimed release “Paquet surprise”. “Merveilles”, translated from the French word as wonderland, describes the album very fitting as the songs have a very illustrative quality. Where the previous album relied a bit more on sweet melodies and quick changes “Merveilles” explores different sound worlds in depth and illuminates a terrain of diverse emotional scenarios. Silent passages of field recordings are combined with subtle harmonic layers, interrupted by sudden noise eruptions and contrasted by folk like guitar melodies and very concrete sounds, often leaving the listener wondering what the origin of this tone might be.
It is a pleasure to have a documentary of this interesting collaboration in which both musicians are able to realise their grown individual expertise. Sébastien Roux, working at the IRCAM and well known for his success in continuing the French line of music concrète in a new and contemporary way, clearly helps to establish the abstract narrative form of this record with arrangements of cut and edited pieces of concrete recordings. The influence of Greg Davis, often described as the anchor figure in the forming of the laptop folk scene, is clearly audible in melodic guitar lines and the construction of dense harmonic drones. But the strength of this collaboration is the fact that Greg Davis and Sébastien Roux combine their musical ideas creating a very unique approach of their own. This record clearly combines elements of serious and popular music in a highly thoughtful and contemporary way, widening the edges of by now established stylistic fields that Davis and Roux once helped to define.
“Merveilles” consists of edits of live recordings made during a tour through Europe and the US in 2005 - it is the pleasant proof that electronic music of such richness in detail can be played and composed live.

Pay attention to the new Greg Davis and Sebastian Roux collaboration: this is how these things should be done. Their computerized workings on music could be an example, no, should be an example to many aspiring would-be's at the laptop. [...] Davis, headliner of laptop folk, and Roux with his roots at IRCAM. Two men from two different continents. What they bring together in experience and ideas is great. Laptop styled drone music - ambient glitch! Musique concrete, field recordings, even bits of noise are part of this. Roux and David avoid all the cliché's that are sometimes part of ambient glitch and use only original sounds and original approaches. This is what separates the true innovators from their copyists. A lesson to be learned by many. Great CD. Vitaly Weekly 25-08-2008