Say "Vell."

Those who have heard Views from the Real World or Moodgadget's compilation Expanse at Low Levels will be familiar with Viul. Personally, I was thrilled with Luke Entelis's remix of my "Walking Toward a Setting Sun," which left me dying to hear more. His two songs on Low Levels worked as a nice teaser, and now he is finally preparing his first proper release, Summer's Wet Work Is Done. The album artwork was done by Alex Koplin (who did Table for Two as well as my Men and Women series) and frankly I'm very jealous that it's not the cover of my next release.

In any case, Summer's Wet Work is awesome. Luke takes very careful drones that are on the metallic-sounding side and lets them icily glide along, like an origami sailboat down a nearly-frozen, snow-covered stream on an overcast winter's day. Though much more subdued, with more of a dark streak, and less "uplifting" than some ambient producers such as Stars of the Lid or - ahem - A Setting Sun, Viul's music is no less delightful because of it. I can't wait to talk this guy into collaborating on a project, if he can find some time away from his job over at the US Congress in Washington.

I asked Luke a few questions and he graciously granted me the privilege of his response:

JB: So what's behind the name of the album?
LE: 'Summer's Wet Work Is Done' is a title I've wanted to use since I was living in Ann Arbor a few years ago. It just seemed appropriate, and I did a small part of the work for one of the EP tracks over that last summer I was there. Mostly it's the fact that I love AA and leaving it at the end of that August was really hard, and there's something about the title that just seemed to vaguely capture that, as far as words can do that sort of thing.

JB: You and Benoit Pioulard have traded a few remixes. What's the connection between you two?
LE: Benoit Pioulard is a friend, a constant inspiration and just generally fucking brilliant, in my expert opinion. He and I admired some of the same music, etc., and ended up in a band together in Michigan called Esmae and we've managed to keep in touch since that sort of fell apart when we graduated. Obviously he's done a number of amazing things since, not limited to his work with kranky and Moodgadget. I was happy with my remix of "Ext. Leslie Park" from Pr