Though long established in the Lyon post punk/electronic scene, Societe Etrange look set to extend their wavelength with a pulsating new album ‘Chance’ (available on Bongo Joe March 4th onwards). Evolving from the partnership of Antoine Bellini (electronics) and Romain Hervault (bass), the music of Societe Etrange has been oscillating within their city’s cluster of collectives and creatives for over ten years now. Their previous LP ‘Au Revoir’ emerged way back in 2015 focusing on the motoric and minimal with Alan Vega/Martin Rev undertones but now ‘Chance’ looks set to up the ante. With percussionist and electronic musician Jonathan Grandcollot joining the group, the Societe Etrange sound has lost none of its fierce independent edge, just gained more dynamic possibilities.

It’s a record that depends less on the mesmeric but more on surging post rock heftiness, spikey post punk rhythms and the powerful undertow of dub electronics to push the six tracks over some imagined industrial hinterland. The entrance to Societe Etrange’s otherworld is via ‘La Rue Principale De Grandrif’, a bustling thoroughfare alive with shadowy basslines, clattering beat mechanics and minimal guitar coding. The track oozes atmosphere as it descends through some cavernous electronics before resting somewhere darker. From then the five instrumental components that combine to make ‘Chance’ unwind with a sense of purpose and coherence that elevates the trio’s sound beyond any sprawling anonymity.

Take ‘Nute’ as a prime example. Resolutely built around an expectant synth melody with Kraftwerk sensibilities and agile non-rock percussion, Societe Etrange show they have an intuitive grasp on the power of repetition. Here is a band that can take a theme, extend it, stretch it then distort and disconnect it, before returning to the starting point for the final push. Want proof then check ‘Nute’s’ prolonged key changing mid -section, all dub swirls and thuds, before its ascent back to the main hook – crowd pulling stuff.

Then there’s the angular urban-noir ‘New New York’ that skulks around to the judders of reverberating synth chords and drummed kinetics. As ominous as Martin Rev’s cityscape music, the band fearlessly lead the track underground with a prolonged climb down through the dub sub-strata. Audacious and incredibly effective, ‘New New York’ demonstrates a sense of detail with its deftly placed tambourine chinks and flute squeaks, reminiscent of This Heat at their most forensic.

Such an attuned dub aesthetic is a significant contributor to the Societe Etrange sound. ‘Sur La Piste De Danse’ takes that vibe deeper and lower with Hervault’s minimal bass booming upfront while Grandcollot’s drum patter adds some exotic warmth. It’s not surprising that co-founder Antoine Bellini has spoken of the band’s music being elevated by their newest member’s arrival. The rhythmic element on ‘Chance’ makes so much more than a beat making contribution. Grandcollot’s drumming adds colour and interest, light and shade, atmosphere and anchorage. Think the Jacki Liebezeit/Charles Hayward school of kit-work or a contemporary parallel in Valetina Magaletti’s work with Vanishing Twin and Holy Tongue. That versatility is pivotal to the sultry ‘A L’interieur Au Numero 97’ where a relaxed samba disguises a deceptively complex musical weave. Stabbing buzz-saw synth shapes, modular bleeps, root note bass, hissing hi-hat and supple conga pulses lock and bond to make an effortless meandering whole.

Maybe it’s at these moments, when experimental fluidity and defined structures combine, that Societe Etrange are at their most potent. Closing tune ‘Futur’ certainly lobbies hard in favour of that proposition with some immaculately controlled pace and drive. Call it anthemic, call it a ‘banger’, call it whatever, this is music that has a joyous uplift from the moment the highlife bass conjures up those harmonics, all the way to the tumbling drum play out. The track also stands as a fitting coda to an album that for all its energy and abstraction still reaches out and connects. For Societe Etrange to have achieved this on ‘Chance’ is not, despite the record’s title, lucky. ‘Chance’ is the result of natural chemistry, shared experience and inspired musical judgement.

After a debut LP cheekily titled Au Revoir (“goodbye”) released on S.K Records back in 2015, Lyon-based trio Société Étrange is back with a brand new full-length. Composed of “6 love songs without words,” as the Bandcamp liner notes describe it, Chance is a captivating trip throughout the experimental terrains of new French kraut composed entirely in the studio. The album is now available via Swiss label Les Disques Bongo Joe in digital, vinyl, and CD formats.

The 2020’s have seen a major comeback in artists chasing after that danceable but experimental Downtown NYC 81 sound. Societe Etrange is a gauzy, dubby, slightly motorik revamp of ESG (but more laid back on “La Rue Principale de Grandrif”) and Liquid Liquid (heavy rubbery bass on “Sur La Piste de Danse.”) Their synth sounds are strangely subtle and the best tracks (the closer “Futur”) oozes out of your speakers without announcing itself. Six hypnotic songs (that pitch blend on “Nute” is made for someone’s druggy dreams) that make you listen closely.

Now here’s some tasty avant-rock guitar noise, played by the group Trojan Panda on their album Peau (CARTON RECORDS CROIX-CROIX 14). Some fine French players are here (all working in Paris I believe), under the aegis of Jozef Dumoulin who came up with the idea. Dumoulin harbours a taste for “post-seventies alternative guitar rock”, which might mean anything from Sonic Youth to Mudhoney, but he also liked the idea of musicians playing instruments which they didn’t train on, and this change-’em-up strategy is the basis of the Trojan Panda project. Julien Pontvianne and Hugues Mayot are both saxophonists / woodwind players, but here they are relegated to bass and drums respectively, while the conceptual minimalist electronic composer Léo Dupleix and the classical bassoonist Sophie Bernado are wielding electric guitars, along with the “Mr Instigator” JD and his axe.

The players might thus be cast out of their respective comfort zones, but this hasn’t hurt the music one iota; on the contrary, the quintet turn in a very credible set of dour, discordant and angsty strumming-mental exercises full of sullen anti-social moodswings, creating edgy music that will please fans of The Shaggs as well as The Stooges by way of The Dead C, plus there’s none of that pernicious Glenn Branca influence in the form of “clever” tunings or metal rods inserted into the neck. Trojan Panda – not a great name, but the idea is that they’re smuggling in cultural contraband in the guise of a cuddly toy – have been working at this since 2017, so some of their first-ever recorded efforts are here (captured live at a Jazz Festival), along with more recent recordings from 2019. The overall aim is free improvisation in the form of guitar instrumentals, allowing some composed elements in the mix too. Previous Jozef Dumoulin projects have failed to connect with this listener, but this one appeals on a gut level, and one can adjudge the experiment as a success. Fave cuts: ‘Black Madonna’, ‘Mythoman’, and ‘Sylvia Coiffure’, all reeking of fine tension. (24/03/2021)

There are noises. Many noises. Noises that are subsumed into other noises. Noises that undermine. Noises that accent or resonate. Noises that create harmonics or dissonances with themselves. Filtered noises, rhythmic noises. Obvious noises. Found noises. Noises that surprise or disturb. Noises that welcome. Noises that attract and repel. Loud noises, quiet noises and noises that disrespect the silences or enhance them.

Sitting between a laboratory and a plant room where secret chemicals are made, listening to the process, the agitation, the percolations, leakages and reactive bubblings and whistlings. Filters are eaten up by otherly filters and those filters in turn are consumed by their own echoes and filtered of course.

Arecibo excitedly thinks it finds another distant lifeform but eventually calms itself when realising it is only hearing an ancient historical interpretation of its own messaging system in reverse.

These are the components of this work. It’s a vision of post-industrial pharma dripping dollars into shareholder’s dividend troughs.

If all of the above tick your boxes then dive right in.

Visual artist and sound sculptor Jean Francois Riffaud has taken his RIFO alter ego on a guitar odyssey hanging primarily on tonal repetition and hypnotic rhythmic interaction. Running through five inter-related pieces that spur one another on like an enthusiastic relay team, the guitar on Betel is treated with anything but reverence and at times is barely recognisable.

The utterly basic hypnotic rhythm that prepares us for departure is like a slow helicopter with just the hint of a sparkle in the background. It runs wit the very basest of instincts and move slightly in and out of phase. His idea of a sound sculpture is assimilated here, something monolithic and simple but that has the illusion of movement, drawing closer and changing position.

At points the guitar sends reminders to you of its general structure and form, a primitive, distorted sensation that speaks of decay and antiquity. As things move on, so it becomes less incantatory and silence blossoms between the notes. Having drawn you in, it now settles you down, but its ghostliness begins to lose form and grows more static, more deliberate; a loop of awkward, blunt notes that disorientate the listener surrounding them with what sounds like a previously undiscovered frog chorus, intensely alive but hidden.

Offset metronomes spring to mind at points, but as an aural sculpture it is in constant motion with its simplicity of form belying its ability to draw you in. Sounds diverge each time and you think you are ready for the next logical step, but often there is harsh juxtaposition that surprises. Strings bark like dogs or a saw deep in the forest; rather unwelcoming, changing the mood for something darker and leaving a long distance travelled from the simple opening.

A didgeridoo-like sound descends into the abyss as feedback grows distant moving into the final coda which is strangely sparse and utterly unrecognisable from the setting off point. The violin-like comedown melancholy that drops you off at the end after the intense burst of hyperactivity preceding it is a bit of a balm that leaves you feeling a little more prepared for re-immersion into life.

If you are looking for a guitar album that is unlike any other, Betel could be for you. One musician’s idiosyncratic approach makes for something immersive and quite daring.

Carton Records and Coax Records have jointly released Betel by French musician JF Riffaud, also known as RIFO. The album draws on the music of sub-Saharan Africa such as that of Sunny Ade or Flamme Kapaya as much as being influenced by American primitivists and minimalists from John Fahey to Tony Conrad via Morton Subotnick.

Of the album, RIFO says:

BETEL is a chewing plant in south-east Asia, and also the name of a sanctuary of Jacob in Israel. Starting from the repetition of a declined gesture, taken in games of rebounds and filtered by transistors, spaces confront each other in a sequence of raw and concrete organic materials, sometimes figurative. Like a very old mechanical, pneumatic, pre-synthetic music.

A solo number for guitar and tape echo, “Smile” is taken from the album, released on digital platforms in June, and will be followed by a vinyl edition in autumn 2021. An hypnotic video using glitched photographs and cyanotypes, directed and edited by Ramataupia, is premiered here:

Over the last year I have been trying to extend my musical boundaries. I have had the time and opportunity to listen to more classical and experimental music, mostly thanks to Radio 3’s diverse programming. Julien Boudart’s latest release appealed to my new found interests. I am also increasingly aware of artists and musicians, past and present, who use myths of Ancient Greece as inspiration. These stories continue to resonate in our everyday lives as we recognise the global issues we have to deal with. Boudart is a French composer and musician who has been performing and composing on electronic instruments since the 1990s. His academic background is in mathematics and social science. He has developed a theoretical and philosophical aspect to his work and his approach to music and sound. This approach reflects both contemporary politics and the religious and magical aspects of musical performance. His work to date has involved collaborations with artists and musicians who are equally committed to pushing boundaries and taking inspiration from ancient myths and music. Listening to ‘Nome Polycephale’, his first solo album, it is no surprise that he has composed works for theatre, radio and multimedia performances. This piece is based on a report of an ancient lost tune, played on an aulos (a kind of Greek double flute), and mentioned by Pindar in his poems. Boudart has composed these pieces on a Serge modular synthesiser, using non linear speakers (similar to the Leslie speaker) and including field recordings. This is a sonic experience, and in keeping with the inspiration, the murder of a gorgon, (like Medusa), it is both disturbing and fascinating. It is visceral at times. Some pieces are more accessible than others, but accessibility isn’t really the point. It is a collection of compositions that should be the accompaniment to a ritual or ceremony. This is an intriguing reminder of the power of sound to shift and transform the world around it.

And there was I thinking that it was only Grasslands that combined a love of making exploratory and innovative music with a real-life career in ecology and the environment. You have to admit that it is a pretty small cross-over point on any Venn Diagram that you care to create. But Gilles Poizat lives a similar double life, one where the greenery and grandeur of the natural world spill over into sonic creations.

Although he has a string of albums behind him, both collaborating with Catherine Hershey (Rev Galen) and Mazalda and as a solo songwriter, Champignon Flamme marks his first purely instrumental outing. And what a brilliant and beguiling affair it is.

The album is based on his main instrument, the trumpet, and experimental meanderings across the sonic range and tonal delights of the modular synthesizer. Partly improvised, the trumpet sets up an initial sound to act as a springboard and this then starts the sonic ball rolling, modulating, repeating and evolving, generally in random and unexpected ways. The trumpet sometimes remains the focal point and just as readily disappears under the sea of effects which it has created, leaving just the consequences of its musical actions as evidence that it was ever there.

The results are beguiling and odd, random and free-form, for the most part, a live experience captured as it happened in the studio. In it, you can hear musings on nature and life, of intimate rituals and big questions and, like any music that is this experimental and free-wheeling, it is as much about the questions that the listener asks of themselves as those directly suggested by the artist.

As strange as it is hypnotic.

An album of concepts for trumpet and modular synth. It doesn’t quite say that in in the press release but that description just about sums up “Champignon Flamme” by Gilles Poizat.

As you might therefore expect, this album is on the train to a station named avant-garde and, while the familiarity of melody isn’t quite abandoned, it isn’t the core of these six songs. Worshippers of conventionality may well find themselves confused by the lack of planned waypoints on this sonic journey but it has to be the said that this is still a journey that is quite easy to enjoy. There are, for example, elements of soundtrack parallelism as the robotic pitch patterns draw energy from long forgotten science fiction films that only ever seemed to find their true home on VHS yet the result always seems more than the result of a man versus machine shootout.

No doubt deliberately fragmented to distance the music from reality, “Champignon Flamme” works best in the dark when all those pulsating beeps and bongs escape their digital prison to ricochet around the room in a vainglorious search for spiritual identity.