Description
“Everything that can be technically achieved will be. All possible combinations will be exhaustively tested.” – Dennis Gabor’s Law
A philosophical, poetic and political reflection on our insatiable fascination with technology, a dependence as reverential as it is increasingly alienating and exploitative; French instrumental experimentalists BRUIT ≤’s second full-length, ‘The Age Of Ephemerality’ is a seismic collision of old and new, of sounds organic and electric, with the trailblazing fourpiece capturing the resultant symphony in all its chaotic, confrontational glory.
Rising from the smouldering remains of various French major label pop bands in 2016, BRUIT ≤ \ˈbrü-ē\ [French, literally, noise] assembled with the desire to escape the confines of the ‘big business’ music industries and return to creation as an artistic process unadulterated by commercial constraints or expectations.
Initially considered a studio project only, 2018’s ‘Monolith’ EP (Elusive Sound) saw the four musicians behind BRUIT ≤ unleash their expansive and intensely emotive hybrid of ambient electronica, modern classical and panoramic post-rock onto the world with a now legendary 20-date tour across France and Belgium. Bolstered by the phenomenal response, the Toulouse-based band returned to their studio, reinvigorated to begin work on their debut full-length, ‘The machine is burning and now everyone knows it could happen again’.
Digitally released to widespread critical acclaim and subsequently physically released through Pelagic Records in 2021, ‘The machine is burning…’ ended up being the 2nd best-selling release for Pelagic during the pandemic and propelled BRUIT ≤ across Europe, playing over 50 shows through 12 countries, performing on prestigious festival stages including Roadburn, ArcTanGent, Amplifest, Dunk and Damnation and touring alongside genre luminaries such as Amenra and EZ3kiel. Having earned a fearsome reputation as a live act, BRUIT ≤ subsequently closed this chapter of the band with the musical refuge of 2023’s contemplative and delicate ‘Apologie du temps perdu vol.1’ EP (Pelagic Records) before downing tools entirely to tour the world as the backing band for legendary electronic act M83.
Wanting to reconnect with the shoegaze ambience of his critically acclaimed 2003 ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts’ and 2005 ‘Before The Dawn Heals Us’ albums, Anthony Gonzalez, the musical visionary behind M83, integrated BRUIT ≤ into his live band and also entrusted the musical direction of the tour to Clément Libes, the band’s bassist. It was during this tour that the initial sketches of the band’s next record began to take shape. Both emboldened and overwhelmed by the experience, the quartet eventually fled the endless turmoil of the road and retreated to the heights of the Pyrénées mountains where they finished five new songs, which were then recorded in a 160-year old church in their city of Toulouse. This collection of songs is ‘The Age Of Ephemerality’, a full-length album that finds the band remaining steadfast as ever in their sonic roots and creative principles whilst also pushing their musical horizons to the bleeding edge.
A cautionary sonic exploration of society’s deference to the algorithm; ‘The Age Of Ephemerality’ will not be available on major international streaming platforms. Much like the rest of the band’s discography, the album reinforces the collective’s staunch boycott of Spotify; a response to the platform’s consistently diminishing artist payout policies as well as billionaire CEO Daniel Ek’s recent investment in the arms trade. Written in the mountains and recorded in a church, the album is BRUIT ≤ experimenting with capturing the sound of physical space as if it were an instrument in its own right; as something that can never be artificially generated or digitally replicated.
Amplifying contemporary instruments, tools and tech in a building hundreds of years old; synths, drums, strings, an eight-strong electric guitar orchestra made up of friends and collaborators from the Toulouse scene (Slift, Plebian Grandstand, Mourir, Zelezna, Orne) and the original, 1864 church organ collide in an incendiary aural statement that spurns society’s reliance on technocratic tendencies in favour of celebrating togetherness, the power of community and the creative inspiration of the moment.
Afterwards, the band spent weeks between Toulouse’s Studio Capitole and their own Studio La Taniere, experimenting with an array of configurations and arrangements that push the idea of post-production to its limits. By layering contrasting compositional methods from different technological eras on top of a sprawling collection of sounds old and new, BRUIT ≤ deliver an astounding sonic choreography that forces the listener to confront the inequalities and injustices behind the casual convenience of the modern day music industries.
‘Ephemeral’, the album’s opener and lead single, immediately recalls the intensity of ‘The machine is burning…’ The rousing classical motif that makes up ‘Ephemeral’s first minute is summarily obliterated by pummelling half time drums and a white noise wall of sound that proves BRUIT ≤ have only sharpened their edge in the intervening years. Subsequent track ‘Data’ takes ‘Ephemeral’s instrumental fury and reshapes it; cannibalising the grinding cacophony and spitting out a delirious, DnB-like dirge before this too implodes in a hail of scattered digital artefacts before a blissfully bittersweet piano motif plays us out; a haunting analogue of the track’s synthesized introduction.
It is on the album’s final track however, ‘The Intoxication Of Power’, that BRUIT ≤ bring matters to a head. A 13-minute epic that finds a fleeting harmony between classical strings and break beat drums before things take a discordant turn as soaring synths ally with the church organ in all its apocalyptic glory until suddenly we’re left with nothing.
BRUIT ≤ close ‘The Age of Ephemerality’ with a quote from George Orwell’s eerily prescient dystopian masterpiece 1984, itself a knowing action of repetition and retooling but also a reiteration of a warning as true today as it was over 75 years ago:
“If you want to picture the future, imagine a boot stamping on the human face, forever. The moral is a simple one, don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”
Just as BRUIT ≤ seek to expose how desperate things have become, ‘The Age of Ephemerality’ serves as a harrowing yet profound reminder that the only way to break this algorithmic malaise and see real change is to resist, to do it ourselves.
How many records have you heard this year that can make the same claim?
FOR FANS OF
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hans Zimmer, Mono, Nils Frahm, Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, A Silver Mount Zion, Boards Of Canada, This will Destroy You
