What do you get when Terrence from Locrian (here under his moniker Brutalism) teams up with a French instrumental trio? You get everything. Noise, Ambient, World Music, Classical and Neoclassical. If you like your music challenging, like to listen around the bend - then check out the collaboration between Brutalism and Toru. It will bend your mind!
Isn’t it always the best thing if life moves in mysterious ways? Toru, the trio based in three different French cities (Lyon, Marseille and Nice), released their second album Velours Dévorant back in 2023 (amongst others also via our friends in WV Sorcerer Productions) - and for the cover they used a sculpture by another friend of Veil of Sound - the amazing, multi-dimensional Terence Hannum, who is also in Locrian who might be the best-kept secret of the metal world even though we try our hardest to alter that. They used a photo of his sculpture “Bouquet” for the cover and some time later they asked him if he’d be up for a split record as they had one amazing long-track left from the sessions pre- and shortly after finishing Velours Dévorant. Terence agreed and here we are – with this record their label Arsenic Solaris once again shows their amazing taste for great splits!
So, let’s have a look at the three tracks which combine for roughly 40 minutes of running time! The first track is the one by Toru called ”Witches’ Cliff” and it makes up for more than 21 minutes alone! The track is a miracle brew concocted by legendary wizard inspirators such as Throbbing Gristle but also more modern acts like The Ruins of Beverast. Interestingly, there are people who would try to genrify this release as Avantgarde Black Metal, but to me this is a post-modern soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic Shamanistic ritual. Maybe the three are looking into the future with this track that is based on long spherical, longing synth sounds before some noises and field recordings shoot from left to right and back again. Some things sounds like Cicadas, others remind one of the crackling fire, so to set this somewhere in a location like New Mexico is easy to do. If anybody expects to find real Blastbeats on this track, I got to disappoint you, because even though the tracks has its louder passages and surely erupts a bit in certain parts of the long ride, but it never tries to achieve a kind of Black Metal rage and it also lacks some kind of coldness. The percussive elements, the different musical instruments embedded among the many layers have no anger agenda.
Then we get Hannum’s two tracks and they connect with Toru’s in the use of field recordings and long establishing synth sounds. There is a certain resemblance to Coil or maybe even Current 93 in here, it could easily be put onto a mixtape of truly pioneering 80s Avantgarde somewhere along those lines and references. The haunted screaming vocals are another connection to Toru’s track, as well as the vibrating noise cascades in the middle section of the mix which are sometimes substituted to some even higher, even more elegant synth passages which seem to reach out to the listener, in order to establish contact. Both tracks, ”Deconstruction of Interior Voids” as well as ”The Lantern of Darkness” do not mind showing their Ambient sides and yet become more than mere emulations. It’s often the little things that differentiate it from real Ambient like Eno, for example the singular hits on the drums at the beginning of the first track. Sometimes one can imagine these tracks to be leftovers from Locrian sessions, for example for the Ghost Frontiers” EP which accompanied their New Catastrophism record. However, these tracks are the results of Hannum’s mind and thus they are little less multi-faceted as Locrian songs which are the achievement of three singular minds. Nevertheless, when for example ”Deconstruction…” has some far-away-in-the-mix cascades slowly creep up to the forefront of our attention, then one can definitely hear his most well-known band.
With this Split, Arsenic Solaris achieves something that the best Punk labels of the 80s and 90s did all the time – give you one EP, two sides (okay, this split would not fit a classic 7” but demands a 12”!), two great bands and several awesome tracks to make you curious about the people involved! One thing though – for maximum listening pleasure you need good headphones to get all the details and for your mind to slowly bend around the straight curve.
