Back in 2019 Benoit Pioulard (Thomas Meluch) issued Sylva—an album full of abstract hyper-saturated lo-fi drone-pop sonic textures, which came with an 84 page collection of nature photographs in a linen book. Two pieces with vocals stood out: the brilliantly Bibioesque "Keep" and the less jangly but equally catchy "Meristem." These songs could not have been more appealing to me if Meluch had somehow used a machine to extract my personal dream essence as I slept. Naturally, I promptly forgot to write anything about Sylva, but Eidetic is a leap forward, with more vocals, so I'm glad I kept my powder dry.
Distraction is embedded into modern life and that is why I did not write about Sylva, rather than a consequence of memory. I know this because the record left an impression and I've listened to it several times since 2019. It was stored in at least my short term, if not long term, memory. Eidetic memory, controlled primarily by the posterior parietal cortex of the parietal lobe of the brain, is a temporary form of short-term memory. Everyone has eidetic memory to a degree; it is the ability to see something soon after you look away. For most people, the image lasts from a fraction of a second to maybe a couple of seconds. Visual images in eidetic memory are either discarded or passed to short-term memory where they may be recalled for days, weeks, or months, then discarded or relayed to long-term memory. Of course since both Sylva and Eidetic are audio information this may not be literally pertinent but it is a way to begin to approach Eidetic and to paraphrase Basil Fawlty with his German guests "you (Thomas Meluch) started it."