(released April 12th, 2019, Sdban Ultra Records)

I fell in love with ‘Future Flora’ the first time I laid ears on it. I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for the style alone: a sleek combination of ethereal psychedelic funk rock and the slinky, helicoid riffs of Ethio-jazz. However, there was also a specific item that really hooked me on this album - the off-kilter drum groove on the second track, ‘Maloya Bud’. When I hear something so catchy, yet so inscrutable, I have to listen to it over and over, until I can figure it out.

At first listen, it’s pretty clear that the slow, churning drums that form the understructure of this track are microrhythmic. This means that the rhythm is not evenly divided into subdivisions like eighth notes or sixteenth notes. It’s a technique that is ubiquitous in African music, though in that context, the rhythm schemes are very repetitive, and consequently pretty easy to follow. In contrast, the drums here sound unpredictable, like the perambulations of a stoned sleepwalker. Eventually, I figured out that the rhythm is also a polymeter - the microrhythm in question is a three-pulse figure, but the ‘beat’ implied by the phrasing of the rest of the instruments lasts four pulses, wrapping around to a graciously long measure of 3/4. The effect is jaw-dropping.

‘Maloya Bud’ may be the only microrhythmic track on ‘Future Flora’, but each track has an equally sophisticated concept to form a compelling and distinct identity. On ‘Ankor Wat’, the instruments adhere strictly to an unusual 5-note subset of the major phrygian scale. The result is a sleek, lurid piece that would be at home in the soundtrack of a spy film. Atypical scales also show up on the lengthy title track as well as ‘Hora de Aksum’, each with their own evocative mood. And even when familiar diatonic scales are used, they are approached unconventionally. On ‘Clap Hands’, the bass is decidedly rooted in G minor while the lead melodies highlight the pentatonic D minor scale. And while the richly-layered rhythms on this track are actually pretty simple, they contrast nicely with riffing that incorporates plenty of playful 5/8 syncopations.

Despite its inventive compositions, ‘Future Flora’ never sounds overly dense or forced. There’s a certain sense of restraint that permeates the album. Even though the band is a five piece, each instrument is deployed judiciously. The lead parts are usually held by trumpet and baritone saxophone, though often in unison or antiphony. The rhythm section is often rather sparse, with the bass guitar sometimes playing in a high register, almost like a guitar. The keyboards, when they are used at all, cycle through a few different electric Rhodes and vintage organ sounds.

This minimalist ethos complements the natural, spacious sound of the mix, which frequently makes use of delay effects and reverb to add a slightly trippy edge to the funk rock backbone. The band’s playing style also contributes to this sense of space. A large portion of each track is improvised, with each instrument wandering or acrobatically flitting through dreamy, post-bop melodies. And to tie things together, most of the tracks share the same root notes or scale motifs, which gives the album a sense of consistency, like paintings of the same statue rendered from different angles. The result is nothing short of marvelous.

(self-released April 17th, 2019)

A year ago, if you had told me that my second favorite release of 2019 was going to be an EP-length cut of auto-tuned R&B/hip-hop, I would have never believed it. Yet, here we are. Body Meat’s ‘Truck Music’ deftly side-steps the tired conventions of its genre, resulting in an imaginative album filled to the brim with bold ideas.

To be fair, I had mixed feelings about ‘Truck Music’ on my cursory first listen. The album’s opening track, ‘Combo’, wastes no time in launching a volley of air horns, vocal samples, and trap-style drums. My gut reaction to most of these items is to label them ‘cliche’ and move on, but something about their arrangement compelled me to keep listening. Initially, these compositions may come off as dense and disorienting, but on closer examination they reveal a captivating internal logic. On the surface, the sonic palette may be a bit garish, but ultimately each sound and sample is invoked entirely on the basis of its own qualities - an oddly innocent reinvention of the hip-hop aesthetic.

If you look into the back catalog of Christopher Taylor, the mastermind behind this project, you’ll find that this is his first foray into this genre. Most of his previous albums inhabit an idiosyncratic mix of starkly-experimental math rock and skittering electronics reminiscent of Battles or Palm. Despite its genre differences, ‘Truck Music’ inherits its rhythmic sensibilities from these prior experiments, using a plethora of unusual time signatures and complex syncopations. Sometimes these are rather understated, such as the breezy 5/4 groove of ‘No Garden’. At other times, they are buried under layers of spastic composition. Still, the songs always retain a sense of self-consistency, such as on ‘Make Up’, whose multifaceted usage of 11/8 deserves mentioning, though it is too complicated to describe briefly. 

This complexity pays off. The 808-style drums samples are well-precedented, but avoid being  cheesy due to some cunningly playful accents and phrasing. Likewise, the electric piano, organ, and synths are ripped straight out of a modern R&B lineage, but still strike a good balance between artfulness and nostalgia. At a certain point, you begin to realize that even with its derivative sonic palette, ‘Truck Music’ isn’t even remotely ironic. Kitschy perhaps, but conceived from an honest and whole-hearted attitude. This honesty culminates in the vocals. Normally, I dislike auto-tuned vocals, but there’s an amiable self-awareness to them here. They make no attempt to resemble natural vocals, instead combining overwrought crooning with the chromaticism of pitch manipulation. Without being excessively corny, they still impart the music with a sort of self-indulgent emotionality. When the high-pitch cries soar through ‘Nairobi Flex’, the feeling is unabashedly euphoric. The lyrics are just as sappy as the vocal style, of course, but if anything, this helps further subdue any sense of irony.

This complete reversal between the stereotypical surface aesthetic and the underlying songwriting on ‘Truck Music’ underpins how excellent the album is. Its deconstruction of the broad R&B/hip-hop genre unearths a subtlety and passion I didn’t think even existed. Perhaps its only flaw is its length - at only 22 minutes, I find myself craving more.

(released January 18th, 2019, Dipole Experiment Records)

I usually don’t include artwork as a part of my album reviews, but somehow, the cover of Helium Horse Fly’s ‘Hollowed’ manages to evoke the exact same mood that the music puts me in. The color scheme: a somber black-and-white photograph. The subject, framed in claustrophobic closeup: a humanoid figure with a skeletal bird’s head, crouching as if it might suddenly spring into action. The music on ‘Hollowed’ often occupies a similar state of repose, with a sinister tension simmering underneath. This eventually erupts into devastating peals of avant-metal dissonance, and the cycle between these two states forms the groundwork for an ethereally bleak cut of music.

The ‘metal’ label slipped in without too much forethought - it just feels right to me. However, it’s worth addressing that the majority of this album’s content doesn’t strictly fall into this category. Using more subdued, ‘clean’ sections to provide contrast with a heavier, noisier norm is well-precedented in metal. But on ‘Hollowed’, quiet, barren sections of clean guitar, practically are the norm. They serve a similar role in building tension, but these prolonged meditative excursions, soaked in delay and reverb, simply extend too far for the listener to build anticipation throughout. Instead, they are like a form of hypnosis, and the rare transitions into bona fide metal are like the snapped fingers that break the spell.

But even then, is ‘metal’ quite the right word? The climaxes on this album are certainly heavy, with a dark, chaotic bent that is amplified by their suddenness. But the tone and technique are both very different from most modern metal. The guitar is overdriven, but not to excess, and it focuses on angular, mid-register riffs that alternate between melodies and ‘wall of noise’ fusillades. Likewise, the drums have more dynamics than you might expect from metal, partly in service of the frequently truncated rhythms, such as the convolutions that take up most of ‘Monochrome’, or even fluctuating tempos, such as the centerpiece of ‘In a Deathless Spell’.

Despite how unique these heavy parts are, the quiet interludes have the most compelling composition. I’m used to hearing softer textures being applied merely pro-forma, so the quality of ‘Hollowed’s lurid atmosphere is really arresting. The lead-up to the aforementioned peak of ‘In a Deathless Spell’ hinges on an arpeggiated clean guitar. It has a finely-honed sense of patience, and harmonically it uses some beguiling chords: darkly complex, but not quite jazzy, with lots of semitones and sometimes even tone clusters. The smoky female vocals inhabit these barren areas almost exclusively, a bit like a desperate, mourning cry coming from the depths of a well. A darkly looming bass guitar often forms the foundations of these depths.

The value of ‘Hollowed’ relies on the way it wields tension like a threat, until it finally bleeds into madness. The menacingly fuzzy bass guitar on ‘Happiness’ cuts right into the liminal space between calm and chaos, and so serves as a suitable opening track, a sort of statement of purpose. This album truly runs the gamut between absolutely minimal and maximal dynamics, in a totally unique way that wrings the nerves dry.

(released February 15th, 2019, Leaving Records)

I love minimalism in music, but there’s a fine line between subtle and boring. Black Taffy’s album ‘Elder Mantis’ dives deeply into the better side of this line. It’s unobtrusive enough that you hardly need to pay attention to it to enjoy it (in fact, it makes for great reading music), but despite this, it stands up effectively to even the closest scrutiny. Some of Black Taffy’s earlier work skirts the chopped-and-screwed style of sampled hip-hop, but here, that genre’s slow-motion soporifics are reinterpreted in a stately, almost classical context that makes for a nuanced and reflective cut of ambient music.

The minimalism on ‘Elder Mantis’ starts on the conceptual level. In broad strokes, the album consists of richly-textured samples of plucked string instruments (predominantly harp), which are then anchored by extremely sparse hip-hop drums and bass drones, with occasional appearances from other samples. It may come as a surprise that a lot of variety can be wrought out of this format. This is particularly true for the rhythm, an important component of minimalism - a question of when music elements appear, and here, the answer being ‘not often’. 

The rhythm on this album has a loose, free-form quality that contributes to its sedate mood. This is partly intrinsic to the harp samples - the source material has a very rubato feel, but repetition of the samples force them into a straighter rhythmic context, resulting in a disjointed, tape-loop aesthetic. But even the drums express an ethereal, dissociated quality. They are skeletally minimal, often omitting downbeats, or using slightly off-tempo hits that convert the beat into a woozy sway. Additionally, straight feel and triplet feel are alternated and even juxtaposed, ultimately imitating the harp’s rhythmic aspects. All of this is emphasized by slow tempos, often in resplendent 3/4 time. Halfway through ‘Land of Nod’, this pace suddenly drops even further, to what can only be described as numbingly slow. It’s this dearth of ‘rhythmic detail’ that makes the music so unobtrusive, but these peculiarities ultimately reward close listening as well.

In contrast, the texture on ‘Elder Mantis’ is sumptuously rich, in a scintillating, quivering way that strongly reminds me of the qualities of water. Impressionistic, minor-keyed harp notes are inflected with subtle vibrato, backmasking, and various other effects, which also helps distinguish between the many layers of samples. The harp technique also varies widely between pensively plucked melodies and lush glissandos, such as the textures evoked on ‘Geraldine’. On some songs, the plucked strings have a more trebly, shamisen sound, such as on ‘Lantern Flies in Mist’. Synth pads occasionally add to the dreamy mood, though they are so abstractly atmospheric that they seem to be cut from the same cloth as the harp itself. In a rare treat, halfway through the album, ‘Switchback’ indulges us to a brief interlude of flute and piano. 

To consummate the album’s nocturnal aesthetic is one final element: the softly scratchy texture of worn vinyl. On ‘Para Los Compana’, it provides an almost diegetic context for the corroded sound of the strings. But even throughout the album, it is nearly an ever-present symbol for the mysterious, aqueous quality of the music itself.

(released October 11th, 2019, Weird World)

What constitutes ‘pop music’? On the surface, Richard Dawson’s confusingly-titled ‘2020’ ticks all the boxes, perhaps leaning toward pop folk or experimental pop. I consider ‘catchiness’ an essential criterion, and I’ve certainly gotten songs from this album stuck in my head more than any other album on this list. But looking at ‘2020’ objectively, it’s a small miracle that these songs end up being so memorable when they employ such an eccentric musical vocabulary.

Of course, ‘2020’ has its fair share of simple and familiar musical elements as well. It doesn’t force you wrestle with complex jazzy harmony; most of the chord voicings have only a few notes, typically very diatonic in sound. Likewise, the arrangement isn’t especially dense, with vocal melodies frequently being doubled by the guitar. However, the chord progressions that these parts constitute are often downright strange. The key modulates often throughout the album, boldly jumping between key centers with varying degrees of abruptness. Commonly, this entails switching between the major and minor modes of a single key center, such as in the chorus of the opening track ‘Civil Servant’. Sometimes, two instruments even play chords with contrasting key centers, such as in the intro of ‘Black Triangle’ (highly dissonant, despite its infectious, pop rock energy). In a few cases, the music veers into sheer atonality - just try charting the chord changes in the eerily subdued-sounding bridge of ‘Two Halves’. But overall, because of the simplicity of the arrangements, these idiosyncrasies do not alienate, so much as enchant.

That said, pop songs are frequently built around the personality of their singer, and ‘2020’ is no exception. And as you might expect, Richard Dawson has a duality that reflects that of his accompaniment - guileless and folksy, but also quixotic and daring. These qualities are on full display in the lyrics. Each song portrays a different episode of modern life’s vicissitudes in the format of a rambling, slice-of-life narrative. Dawson treats these episodes, which range from his anxiety disorder (‘Jogging’) to the catastrophic flooding of his senile mother’s village (‘Queen’s Head’) to the tribulations of the homeless (‘Dead Dog in an Alleyway’), with a humble shrewdness that renders them vivid and emotionally moving. Yet they are also not without the respite of self-effacing British humor (all the more charming with Dawson’s Geordie accent).

Dawson’s personality also comes across through his unrefined vocal style. On ‘Fresher’s Ball’, he slides in and out of key, and his voice creaks with a hoarse yet articulate tone that you’d expect to hear from a man playing at a pub’s open mic night. This meshes nicely with his vocal cadences, which often have a conversational rhythm. However, he also employs an impressive falsetto which hardly seems like it could come from the same person, though it too is quite unpretentious. The rest of the album’s instrumentation is similarly workmanlike - the strings of his guitar rattle and buzz, especially in sections where they are run through a high-gain amplifier. The synths sound like something hastily chosen from a soundbank. But despite its unpolished sound, ‘2020’ has enough substance to stand up to its longer run time (including ‘Fulfillment Center’, a 10 minute epic of scathing social satire). The album’s inventive compositional style is the compelling substrate for a whirlwind tour of the world through Richard Dawson’s eyes.

(self-released August 3rd, 2019)

Customarily ‘heavy’ music genres require a big sound. On ‘Van Dyke Browne’s Crystal’, The Central shows us that a big sound doesn’t require a big lineup. The band consists of only a guitarist/singer and a drummer, both of whom clearly push the limits of their musical ability to put out this album of demanding and high-energy mathcore. The appeal of the ‘power duo’ format is hardly unprecedented in all parts of the punk/grindcore spectrum, as seen in bands ranging from Death From Above 1979 to Iron Lung. But The Central use two-man setup to catalyze a very specific synergy of combustive energy and unpredictable rhythms.

Rhythmic complexity is a defining feature for mathcore, and most often this means unusual time signatures and fast tempos. ‘Van Dyke Browne’s Crystal’ has these in spades - turn-on-a-dime meter changes, unexpected syncopations, and of course some full-steam-ahead, thrashy D-beats. But this style is taken one step further with the inclusion of tempo manipulation. The title track ‘Browne’s Crystal’ introduces this concept, with sections separated by brief fermatas, and at the end, a stiflingly gradual deceleration that brings about a final, crushing breakdown. At other times, this tempo shifting is entwined with meter changes, such as the unison sections on ‘Eight Van Convoy’ which morph from 9/8 to 5/8. Unlike complex meters, these tempo changes rely heavily on feel, and thus benefit from a lineup where only two musicians need to lock together.

Despite their no-frills lineup, The Central is still abundantly heavy, in no small part due to  the frontman’s vocal style. He employs some truly aggrieved-sounding screams that touch on all parts of his vocal register, with an aesthetic that hits a midpoint between metal and punk. The vocal parts are often doubled on guitar, which mutually bolsters their fullness.

Not that this is always needed, though; the guitar is devastatingly crunchy on its own, and has enough low-end that the bass is hardly missed on tracks like ‘Hey Margeret’, where palm muting is used to imitate bass guitar timbre. At the same time, the guitar is not excessively distorted, and feedback effects are used judiciously. This enables a clearer view of some of the more complicated rhythms, such as on ‘Arob’s Corner’, which also uses palm mutes to a similar end. There’s even a few songs which feature cleaner sections, like ‘Ladies’, along with some surprisingly mellow clean singing. At other times, this guitar tone is leveraged for a more austere post-hardcore vibe, such as on ‘Normal’, which pits guitar twang against a driving 4/4 beat.

Even when playing simpler meters, the drums are unrelentingly intense, alternating between inventive blasts or fills and more minimalist unison patterns. The drummer is fast and tight (though also not over-rehearsed), which makes the synergy between instruments all the more thrilling. Closing track ‘Sunrise’ is an interesting digression from the drummer's wheelhouse; the density of his parts have an almost tribal feel, paired with layers of primally abstract guitar effects. Yet this is somehow not unexpected given the variety of styles that are incorporated into this album. Despite its minimalist instrumentation, the wide range of techniques and sounds on ‘Van Dyke Browne’s Crystal’ provide for a thoroughly engaging and fun listen.

(released April 5th, 2019, Ronin Rhythm Records)

With a peculiar lineup of piano, upright bass, drums, and two vocalists, the Zürich-based band Ikarus has an interesting approach to songwriting. They use a jazz-derived musical vocabulary to express ideas that emphasize rhythm and texture over complicated harmony. On their latest album ‘Mosaismic’, this core concept is distilled to its purest, most serene form. Each song has the format of a basic conceptual sketch, which the band gently coaxes into glorious bloom.

Contrasting rhythms have always been Ikarus’s primary compositional element. There is certainly no shortage of polymeters, tempo changes, and tuplets on ‘Mosaismic’, along with a few other particularly innovative techniques. Consider ‘Oumuamua’ - its central theme is a 7 note melodic phrase which cycles against a 4 note rhythmic phrase (in 7/8 time). This ‘polymeter of melody’ gradually asserts itself, culminating in some surprisingly bombastic rhythms. Similarly, ‘Aligulin’ is not strictly polymetric, instead contrasting long rhythmic units of 5 or 4 against a steady beat in undulating syncopations. In contrast to this layered type of composition, other tracks like ‘Mondrian’ rely on almost homophonic phrasing, though this simpler technique is offset by a constantly-evolving, serpentine composition, with a few clever instances of hocketing.

Interestingly, this rhythmic complexity is mostly leveraged for textural purposes. The polymeters on ‘Mosaismic’ have a continuous, flowing quality that differs from the more rigid compositions of other artists. This gives rise to an effect similar to zen meditation - the patterns produce unexpected convergences that do not simply originate from ‘composer’s discretion’. However, this stochastic approach necessitates song structures that introduce or remove components gradually, with almost no standard ‘verse-chorus’ layouts. And while the rhythmic ideas may be complex, they are not necessarily dense, resulting in some deceptively simple arrangements.

This simplicity predisposes the music to a sedate, atmospheric vibe, but also compels each instrument to turn its focus to timbre and dynamic range. This is epitomized by the dual vocals - without lyrics, they cycle between cleanly syllabic vocal harmonies and a more ‘vocal percussion’-oriented approach. This variety shows up in the piano and upright bass as well, interpolating among both quietly thoughtful textures and jarringly punctual rhythms. On ‘Subzero’, this adds much-needed density and intrigue to a track that is otherwise focused on sparse yet tricky unison patterns. Additionally, these techniques often complement the drums, which have a spontaneous, free-form feel that matches the slowly unfurling song structures.

These timbral qualities are tied together by the harmonies, which range from jazz-adjacent shadings to a more diatonic modern classical tonality. This yields a wide selection of moods, encompassing the eerily chromatic wanderings of ‘Saiko’ as well as the comfortable, impressionist harmonies on ‘Ikenophobia’. Frequently, the rhythmic sparseness introduces a degree of harmonic ambiguity. But these features need not be well-defined - in fact, this is part of what instills ‘Mosaismic’ with such luscious organic textures, whether they be calmly meditative or fiercely spontaneous.

(released June 28th, 2019, Thin Wrist Recordings)

Drone music, which demands sustained attention to musical notes, is a natural arena for the exploration of microtonality. 75 Dollar Bill, a drone rock guitar/percussion duo applies this idea to quarter-tonal music with the sprawling album ‘I Was Real’. The songwriting therein is surely minimalist, but it has a big sound befitting the ‘rock’ label. While drones serve as its bedrock, the layered instrumentation provides fertile ground for the effects-laden guitar to adopt some ethnic folk and blues stylings.

Strangely, the microtonality throughout the album is rather inconspicuous, even to the well-trained ear. The quarter-tonal (24edo) tuning system used on ‘I Was Real’ has significant overlap with regular Western temperament, and the drone elements emphasize these familiar notes, with the microtones utilized as passing melodic features. A few of the songs even omit the more jarring 11-limit intervals in favor of the mellower ‘desert’ aesthetic that the 7-limit intervals evoke. Weird harmonies do eventually show up outright on the album’s deeper cuts, though - the song suite on track 6 begins with some gangly neutral third intervals, and in its later sections, these elements are twisted even further with some bluesy pitch-bending. But usually these microtonal inflections are woven into a melodic context, such as on closing tracks ‘WZN#3’ and ‘WZN#4’, where they infuse the spritely triple-meter trills with a vibrant tone color. 

This guitar work, which constitutes the bulk of the album, can be quite acrobatic, yet at the same time, through extensive repetition, its function converges with that of the drones themselves. At times, its intensity even winds down to a thoughtfully interspersed fragment, such as on the title track, but in both cases, instrumental density plays a key role. The guitar is looped and layered under texturally-rich distortion, reverb, filtering, and backmasking. This distortion helps contextualize the microtones, often revealing a hint of underlying consonance. The sweeping filter on ‘There’s No Such Thing As A King Bee’ highlights overtones in a similar manner.

Even though the guitar is the star of the show, additional instruments are summoned as needed. Violin is a frequent guest, its lack of frets apt for microtonal contributions. On ‘Every Last Coffee or Tea’, it expresses the leading theme, but later falls back to a throbbing rhythm that fortifies the drone aspects of the track. A few songs also feature a brash baritone sax, which on ‘Tetuzi Akiyama’ gives additional weight to the plodding beat. Other minor players include viola, upright bass, bass guitar, and keyboards, helping to establish a full, well-rounded sound.

While drone rock as a genre doesn’t always lend importance to its rhythms, the stark unrefined percussion plays an important role in setting the mood of 'I Was Real'. Its rough timbre is organic and folksy, and its subtle placement in the mix only adds to the music’s trance-inducing qualities. The rhythmic structure is typically straightforward, even rustic, but a few tracks feature cleverly overlapping meters - crucially, slow and understated, such as the glacially building density on the title track. This is essential to the album’s character, where honed ideas are evinced from an uncomplicated performance style that nearly suggests ancient tradition.

(released March 1st, 2019, Dur et Doux)

In French, ‘pantophobie’ roughly translates to ‘fear of everything’. This is exactly the aesthetic that French prog-metal band ‘ni’ try to cultivate in their latest album. Each song on it is named after a different obscure phobia (let the translations be left as an exercise to the reader), and correspondingly explores a different take on ‘ni’s uniquely nefarious, math-infused style. The compositions are heady, and the harsh, often atonal riffs are sure to inspire gleeful revulsion.

Like most math metal, ‘Pantophobie’ is loaded with unusual time signatures, but there are some other idiosyncratic concepts that make the album a particularly striking example of the genre. Foremost is the extensive use of compound meter (triplet feel). Manifesting as a sort of delirious sway, this rhythmic aesthetic also precludes any resemblance to the overused ‘djent’ techniques endemic to math metal. And while the syncopations that ‘ni’ employ are never really strictly polymetric, they do adopt a similar style - series of subdivisions that interlace with the underlying beat. For example, on ‘Athazagoraphobie’, after a long-ebbing wind-up of atmosphere, the song dives into a driving compound meter riff that contrasts against a 5+5+5+5+4 motif.

However, the most distinctive aspect of ‘Pantophobie’s composition is how uncluttered it is. The beginning of ‘Heliophobie’ is the standard-bearer for this approach, with a few random-sounding jabs of noisy guitar that are then gradually filled in with a rhythmic context. The ensuing drums don’t even use double bass or blast beats, though they are still quite technically challenging, commanding a framework that either bolsters the guitar rhythms or highlights their volatility. Playing smart instead of simply hard like this adds a lot of richness of ‘ni’s sound. Their music is still amply heavy when needed, but the album’s chaotic exuberance is often sufficiently established by the sheer baffling complexity of the songwriting.

At times, ‘Pantophobie’ tones down its instrumentation to produce a softer yet still ominous atmosphere. Subtle guitar textures with reverb and pedals are a common feature, such as in the gloomy intro to ‘Lachanophobie’. These sections magnify the thick, intimidating distortion which inevitably follow them, resulting in some truly massive climaxes (the middle section of ‘Leucoselophobie’ comes to mind). Still, the guitars have a consistent approach regardless of tone, interlocking nimbly in minor or diminished settings. On occasion, they even descend into cacophonous atonality, such as the careening tritones and 'panic chords' on ‘Kakorraphiophobie’. 

The bass guitar has a prominent role as well, with a playing style similar to the guitars themselves. This ranges from big fuzzbox riffs, to articulate melodic parts, such as the unsion patterns near the end of ‘Catagelophobie’. This song also opens with a revealing vocal part - though mostly instrumental, ‘Pantophobie’ does feature a few harsh vocal sections, varying between incomprehensible screeching and manic babbling. These vocals are mixed well into the background, a subtle masterstroke on the album’s intention - to be a musical translation of the depths of tremulous madness. With the diverse songwriting techniques used to establish this aesthetic, ‘Pantophobie’ is a challenging yet rewarding listen.

(releaed November 15th, 2019, Pagans)

Super Parquet’s self-titled album is a curious amalgamation of two seemingly dissimilar genres: traditional French folk music and electronic drone music. The former is definitely the more distinctive of the two. I’m not sure I know of any other bands that even use the cabrette bagpipe or hurdy-gurdy (imagine a violin played with a hand-cranked, keyboard-like apparatus) at all, let alone as foundational elements. But by the end of opener ‘Fourmi / Bouree Courte’, the hurdy-gurdy’s melodic sensibilities, resembling an incessant fiddle, become comfortably familiar. These two instruments have a penetrating timbre that befits the minimalist composition. A third instrument, a French banjo, doesn’t have the same natural inclination towards drones. Instead, it plays relentlessly sinuous passages whose repetition mirrors the drone’s persistence. 

The final contributor is a DJ, who holds the triple role of synths (often filling the bass register), sampled percussion, and sound manipulation. This latter function holds great importance to ‘Super Parquet’s sound. By looping and layering, the instrumental ‘raw ingredients’ are transformed into a psychedelic melange. Copious use of overdrive and filters further augments the density of sound. The resulting timbre is magically rich and dulcet, with a shimmering quality that seems to originate in the highest register of the drone. This phenomenon is at its most evocative on ‘Octobre’, which pairs this bright quality with a major key, and layers of curious effects or samples. ‘Adieu’ brings it in the other direction, with a somber vocal chorus that opens for a melodic line that comes across more as ‘haunting’. The density of sound reaches its apex on the final track, ‘Mars’, where the album culminates in a roar of apocalyptic noise.

Additionally, by not using the live drums, the DJ is able to maximize the sheer impact of the percussion parts. There is a forcefulness on ‘Super Parquet’ that is almost reminiscent of EDM. In fact, much of the album is surprisingly danceable, in which the droning composition imparts a ritualistic quality that further reinforces the folk aesthetic. Predictably, this entails a repetitive rhythm, though not at the expense of complexity. Virtually all the songs are in 3/4 or 6/8, often featuring the ambiguity of 3-on-4 polyrhythms. ‘JMD 134’ even works the 4-motif into the percussion of a song that is nominally in 9/8. These subtle polymeters even appear in instrumental lines as well, such as the deft weavings midway through ‘4 Chasseures’ that serve almost as a textural element of the drone itself.

One final peculiarity lies in the album’s harmonic sensibilities. Harmony is one of the most difficult aspects of drone music - there’s a fine line between engaging the listener and outpacing the simple ethos of the music overall. The album is largely modal, and for the most part it diligently explores the basic intervals of various scales against a droning root note. However, a lot of these explorations are illusively microtonal - still diatonic, but with some slightly sharp or flat intervals. This simultaneously draws upon the natural variability of folk instruments while also impressively embracing the modern avant-garde fascination with microtonality. Serendipitously, this little detail reflects the syncretic character that lies at the core ‘Super Parquet’ and makes it so engaging.