Toàn’s Solitarium Finds Range in a Reduced Setup

Toàn is the longest-running alias of Anthony Elfort, a Brittany-based producer whose career has moved through dub techno, a Parisian ragga jungle collective, electroacoustic and neoclassical composition, and, as a teenager, electro-informed production work for Québécois singer-songwriter Bertrand Pierre. That breadth makes the restraint of Solitarium the interesting part. Elfort has described it as back-to-basics in two senses: he pared his setup down to a secondhand Deluge synthesizer, a Tascam Portastudio, a handful of effects units and his sample library, and he wrote the record slowly, over nearly two years, reckoning with how neurodivergence shapes his own creative process.

The album is sequenced as numbered sketches, 0 through 8, tracing his gradual command of the Deluge. Drones, field recordings and acoustic samples are degraded and reshaped in his cassette studio, with mastering done on an old copy of Sony Sound Forge. “DEL 2” lets filtered white noise wash through like winter wind, with detuned piano breaking the surface. “DEL 4” drags what resembles a 60 hertz hum lower, against broken music box melodies and a ghostly zither, a thread carried into “DEL 5” and its nautical horns.

Tape is where the record earns its keep. As cassette culture has settled into ambient as a shortcut to sincerity, Elfort treats it as an instrument: line noise merges with field recordings, tape-loop imperfections nudge dreamy tracks into rhythm. It rewards repeat listening rather than nostalgia.