Yes, it’s been way too long, since we last heard new music from Year of No Light, the French masters of ambient Post-Metal. And that fact will continue for a little longer because this new release is not new music, but a live recording of an amazing score they performed twice – the second time was more than 10 years ago but we should be very thankful to Pelagic Records for giving us a vinyl release of this brilliant piece. Finally everybody can listen to “Les Maîtres Fous“ - and listening one should be!

As we love Pelagic Records and everything they do for the scene, we continue with our Interview Series that by now has seen such amazing acts as SOM, Telepathy, you, infinite, Jaye Jayle or Pothamus or also a certain band from Southern France whom we do not need to name as everybody knows they released the Post-Rock record of 2025 so far.

Hence, now we are very proud to give you this interview with Year of No Light, who will release Les Maîtres Fous on Friday. The record is somewhere between Wallowing, Pothamus and “classic” Year of No Light. You get long winding Heavy Psych passages with a lot of vibrato on the noisey guitars which slowly build and build – that’s the Wallowing bit – as it sounds a lot like the “swarm of humming bees” underneath their soundscapes as well. The tribal drumming is absolutely flawless and one can recognize the two drummer set-up that the band uses a lot here and much to their advantage – parallels to Pothamus or Smote quickly come to mind. In the second movement of the track to also get some classic Heavy-Metal infused Sludge walls which surely are closest to what one “expects” from the guys.

The idea behind the piece was to score a documentary named Les Maîtres Fous (“The Mad Masters”) back in 2011 as part of an ethnograpic exhibition in Paris at the Musée du Quai Branly. The idea is surely nothing new to people who have been following YoNL for some time as they already achieved huge success by scoring Vampyre back in the day. Wonderful thinking!

The whole thing reminded me a lot of the amazing Neurosis-Tribes of Neurot-packages from back in the day, particularly the Times of Grace / Grace combo. The idea behind most of these combos was to start them simultaneously and have them become one gigantic piece of music spread across two entities and two ideas. Year of No Light is one band but they achieve the same thing on this record - an astonishing feat in and of itself. If you want to know more about the songwriting, the movie background and the performance of it as art of an ethnographic exhibition in Paris some fourteen years ago – enjoy our interview. Unconditional whether you do or not – enjoy the piece and its 27 minutes! I’m sure you will!

Les Maîtres Fous, this perfect example of the cinematic qualities of Year of No Light will be released this upcoming Friday, May 23, and you can still pre-order the record from Pelagic Records!

But now enjoy our talk with Johan and Pierre and do not forget to listen to Les Maîtres Fous from Friday onwards!