"Black Truffle proudly presents The Refrain from Melbourne-based artist Francis Plagne, whose growing catalog of collaborative and solo releases range from song-based work to abstract audio collages.Closely aligned with Plagne's Moss Trumpet LP (released by Penultimate Press in 2018), The Refrain’s two side-long tracks mix sounds of the mundane with the otherworldly; rising, receding and overlapping. The result feels like being led through a series of scenes devoid of context or direction. Furthermore, it’s hard to define the scenes as either inviting or disconcerting, as they’re often both at the same time. As the record progresses sounds reappear and are juxtaposed so as to only hint at the familiar. A hall of mirrors, perhaps?Completed in 2020 using material recorded from 2012-2020, the record uses tapes of shelved, unfinished, and forgotten projects that featured field recordings from various locations, domestic sounds of plastic bottles, bubble wrap, creaking chairs, voice, and instrumental recordings, including an appearance from crys cole on Casio. These pieces were re-amped, processed and edited, then additional instrumental pieces featuring synths, guitars, plastic saxophone, melodica, and percussion were added, the results shaped into drifting, episodic assemblages.Although essentially a tape piece, The Refrain presents as a crude, non-idiomatic composition that feels both timeless and transitory. It’s a million miles from the polish and rigour of GRM, perhaps more in line with Jacques Bekaert’s eponymous Igloo LP, or Costin Miereanu’s Luna Cinese. The Refrain could be read as a psychedelic Krapp’s Last Tape; one man’s response to listening through forgotten and discarded tapes, reflecting, reconciling, and forging a new path. A potent tonic for these absurd times."-- Nick Hamilton, August 2021 

Expanded vinyl edition of the 2019 tape/digital release. This release features two  previously unreleased tracks. Francis Plagne's  work straddles songwriting, electronic composition, and improvisation and has appeared on Kye, Penultimate Press, Black Truffle, and Albert's Basement as well as his own Mould Museum imprint. His first for Horn of Plenty, Rural Objects was recorded to tape at home in Melbourne between 2018-2019. Plagne uses guitar, fretless bass, synths, keyboards, percussion, flute, bottle (plus a guest turn from Joe Talia on drums) to sketch 14 'objects' which glide from the bucolic to the ethereal.  250 copies on black vinyl. 350gsm cover and insert featuring artwork by Francis Plagne. Design & layout by Karolina Kołodziej.

Two Words is the debut release from the duo of Canadian sound artist crys cole and Australian songwriter Francis Plagne. Building on a series of experimental live performances in which the pair toyed with possible common languages for their seemingly unrelated approaches to music, the LP’s two sides present a single piece that brings together abstract texture and slow-motion song in a sonic space where genre cedes to the logic of dreams. The piece begins with a long, nearly static sequence built primarily from rubbed surfaces, using movement in the stereo field and changing mic placements to create a unified but unstable sonic environment that mimics wind, water, and breath, opening an impossible space between nature and artifice. This artificial outdoors ultimately makes room for Plagne’s electric organ, which sounds a series of melancholic chords to accompany a wandering Wyatt-esque keyboard line as cole’s intimate contact mic textures sizzle and pop in the foreground. From here the piece makes a surprise detour into song, as the majority of the second side finds Plagne intoning a series of obtuse two word phrases (from a text by Berlin-based poet Marty Hiatt) to an austere organ accompaniment. Working closely with engineer and producer Joe Talia, cole and Plagne extend the studio-as-an-instrument tradition of Teo Macero and This Heat, introducing subtle yet unexpected production shifts that lead the listener from the initial austerity of the organ and voice to an oneiric space of asynchronised vocal doubles, creaking textures, and distant whistling, ultimately arriving at something like an imagined meeting of Organum and Arthur Russell. Packaged in a suitably mysterious sleeve featuring a lush work by Australian painter Anne Wallace on the front and text by Hiatt on the back, Two Words is both comforting and strange, a disorienting blend of seemingly discrepant elements.

Francis Plagne is pleased to announce his new LP, Funeral Mutes, the second release on his vanity label, Mould Museum. Although there have been some collaborations (with Food Court and Andrew Chalk) and a tape in the meantime, Plagne's songs were last heard in long-player form on Tenth Volume of Maps, released in 2011. Here, aided by long-term collaborators Alex Garsden, Yuko Kono, James Rushford and Joe Talia, he continues his exploration of idiosyncratic, extended song forms and fragmentary lyricism. Primarily recorded over a few days in late 2013 in conditions approaching ‘live-in-the-studio’ (with overdubs added in 2014), Funeral Mutes presents six songs that detour through silence, blown bottles, Stormcock-influenced prog folk, a hint of chicken scratch and a drum solo. Alex Garsden: bottle, guitar, organ, voice Yuko Kono: bass, voice Francis Plagne: bottle, guitar, organ, piano, voice James Rushford: bottle, organ, piano, voice Joe Talia: bottle, drums, percussion, voice Recorded, mixed and mastered by Joe Talia, 2013-2015. Design by Annie Portelli. Drawings by Hanna Chetwin.