Just listened the BRUME "Ainsi soit-il!" LP and just have to put it in own topic... Brume is something what I have been listening pretty much since I got into this kind of stuff. I always thought it was good, but it was somewhere in the "middle". It wasn't brutal, nor that noisy for most of time, and I did like what I hear, but it was hard to express really excitement over material. Especially when he changed into working under his own name, I felt little alienated from it due the often expressed dislike for "real artists" (in lack of better terms) opposed to just "bands".
For my great surprice this LP wasn't so re-issue, but infact works from 2009. Album starts almost like any slightly neo classical leaning industrial, with nearly symphonic slow loops, and grainy speech. It slowly shifts through detailed experimental sounds into drum machine beat, which has very "train like" tempo and sound, but clearly just drum machine. It gives steady drive to first side, but on the top is dense layering of sounds. From deep and well as high piercing drones of horns, some very slow random piano sounds on back, oscillations of synths, dramatic backwards echoes rising in top once in a while. Repeated "I saw his face.. " appears between few minutes. Sound is very well made. Perhaps one could say clean and bright. But that in positive sense.
Material simply drifts fowards. When beat fades out, it continues with quite modern sounding experimental ambient.
What I can put as reference is simply band that's been talked on this board extensively. Contrastate. It is no way 100% similar, but one could place some of the moods into similar category. Before the next rhythmic loop pattern starts, there is amazing physical/field recordings. Bells that sound like decayed fluttering bells, enviromental sounds, etc. Beat what is created from looping percussion is very dominating. It has no tribal or techno feeling, but something else? It doesn't sound very electric, but neither handmade. In mix compared to great layers of other sounds it may be little bit too dominating, but I won't complain. End of album goes to noisier realms, which sounds almost like grinding stones through extensive reverb. And slowly some distant speech you can't really understand is rising from depth.
One could try to show me another 2009 recording, where side of LP, has been so seamlessly composed into extreme success??
B-side starts with more dramatic "electro-acostic" feeling what comes to composition. But goes to much more. It's like mix of busy classical music with other racket, what abruptly does changes into various obscurities. But while for a moment you hear this dirty hand made percussion, it seems more as gimmick what launches suddenly stupid funky bass and clean drum machine with simple disco beat. New Age'y keyboards and few funky guitar samples thrown in mix does give some unbelievable contrast to old spoken word pieces about national socialism, but this is really like new age muzak version of electro funk or something?!
It's about half of the side when this torment finally lets you from its grip. Almost. Then after short bridge beat changes to almost breakbeat'ish mode. There is speech through extensive effects and various effects. One wonders, what the fuck happened? Also, the backwards reverb sound being repeated maybe already 15th time, you start to realize his ideas perhaps ran out after remarkable 1st side. Few elements that stood out amazing, won't be that after same sound is recycled in every few minutes. Side finally calms done into ethereal keyboard tones slowly drifting into distance, but it is too late to save this atrocity you just whitnessed for about 15-20 minutes prior it. The surprice of sick sound collage in the end does bring some points back.
Hand numbered to 250.. yeah. I know, it's pretty much what the "untrendy" experimental LP is bound to sell nowadays, but it still makes me wonder if material like this should be sold more? But to which audience? Don't really know. And that A side you can easily recommend, but B-side is pretty much unbearable experience. If you could cut away most of B-side. Just add the last 5 mins of B to the end of a-side this release would be gold.
So, what's the Brume to get and what's Brume to avoid? Russian label has done pretty extensive job to re-issue old Brume works. Waiting for some copies of those, but could also just re-visit the old tapes sitting in shelves...
