“Nothing But Noise dares a bold engagement with long evolutionary structures that refuse to stigmatize themselves into minimalist phases”
CD1 47:46 1 Autom@ta 8:10 2 Beton BB84 22:36 3 Xperiment777 12:53 4 Autom@ta Reprise 4:07 CD2 43:30 1 Curved Attraction 12:04 2 Methode Obscure 13:26 3 Dust to Nebula <> Self Replicating Forevers 12:58 4 Curved Attraction Reprise 80 4:42 db2fluctuation (2CD/DDL 91:14) (Experimental, ambient, Berlin School) (V.F.)
The trilogy on time is a thing of the past, Nothing But Noise tackles a new challenge with another imposing project entitled FORMATIONS MAGNÉTIQUES ET PHÉNOMÈNES D'INCERTITUDE. Exceeding 90 minutes, the work is presented in 2 CDs carefully wrapped in a digipack sleeve adorned with symbols of another language unique to the mysterious vision of Daniel B. and Dirk Bergen. The title is quite representative of an exploratory music where perfumes of a Larry Fast, in his period of reflections for sequencer and synthesizer, amazed the ears in 1975. Nothing But Noise dares a bold engagement with long evolutionary structures that refuse to stigmatize themselves into minimalist phases. If the sequencers carve heavy and resonant rhythmic horizons, like Tangerine Dream, Redshift and Arc, they break up rather quickly in textures of intense ambiances and din which flirt with a psybient vision or orchestrations worthy of the cinematographic universes for horror movies. Improvisation seems to be the trigger for creativity which is always on the alert and requires some adjustments from the listener. And even the savviest! In short, a solid album which, contrary to what is said, barely flirts with the Berlin School. But in the end, it's real Nothing But Noise as one likes it! A dark note and a heavy sinuous reverb fill the opening of Autom@ta. A plethora of stagnant waves, screaming lines and always those reverberations that push the multiplication of semicircle sounds to the limits of a chthonian universe. This opening title of FORMATIONS MAGNÉTIQUES ET PHÉNOMÈNES D'INCERTITUDE is a kind of defector of the Electronic Industrial genre from the first opus of Nothing But Noise to a buffer zone where the similar genre Berlin School is filled with the new instincts of the Belgian duo. Orchestrations in long staccatos impose a fusion of soft and rough saccades, structuring a rhythm as romantic as an armada of horses in cinematographic plains. Knocks, a bit like gasps, help to increase the wild portion of a rhythm that is unraveled in sound effects, hesitating between a final atmosphere or orchestral rhythm. A last burst and boom! Autom@ta landed in the horizons of Beton BB84. This very long evolutionary title exploits the ambiances of Jean-Michel Jarre at the dawn of his hesitant structures. The cosmic orchestrations are sinuous and interminable, while knocks and their echoes poured in frozen water look at the future of Beton BB84 with a vision where the intensity is at your fingertips. The first part of this title spits an extremely effective sound venom. It's with a choreography of vivid oscillations that its rhythm starts to move. Heavy and yet fluid, it crosses a first zone of turbulence to stop and breathe in the delicacy of a traveling keyboard and slow, lugubrious orchestrations. A nest of sinuous reverberations hatches shortly after, opening the doors of a secret society where sound ectoplasms run in search of a harmonic, if not rhythmic, life. Huge electronic tam-tams thunder at these ambiences with tempestuous knockouts, restructuring a rhythm lively for the neurons, everything is for the neurons in this album. This effective rhythmic din fails on radiations blown by sharp oscillations then slow saccades of a sepulchral cello, causing another change of sound horizon which rushes into an ambiospherical vision full of winds and its sonic particles. If Beton BB84 orders a few listening, Xperiment777 requires some even more. A cloud of white noise adorns its radioactive outbreak. A sequencer imagines a rhythmic structure that collapses and turns around in a fascinating chaos while all the elements in place are in the image of a Tower of Babel's creativity. A zigzagging march escapes from this din to wander through the corridors of a cosmos that seems to be building as Xperiment777 evolves. And so, we advance in an area of ambiosonic turbulence that gradually transforms into a chthonic choir. Fragile and puny, Autom@ta Reprise evokes a pale reflection of the seductive opening of this first CD of FORMATIONS MAGNÉTIQUES ET PHÉNOMÈNES D'INCERTITUDE. The 2nd CD is like the first 48 minutes of this Nothing But Noise's last opus. Muted thumps open the horizons of Curved Attraction. The weak resonant glow sets a gloomy mood that becomes more and more dire as the knocking intensifies their clouds of reverberation. Orchestrations shape the ceiling of the moods until these resonances activate the fury of the sequencer which throws its keys in a very seductive rhythmic disorder. We are not far from Redshifthere. Too bad the second half vegetates in sordid ambiences loaded of tones, but it's typical to Nothing But Noise in its visions of the analog art. These ambiences blow on waves of reverberations which escape in the opening of Obscure Method. The overture is lugubrious with slow staccato movements with false violin strings heavy and overwhelming. The sound fauna is carved in the sinister with thin threads of spectral voices and strange noises which ooze from the walls of a long corridor of dread. When these ambiences release a last breath, around the 6:30 minutes, the staccato becomes livelier and less burdensome, initiating the awakening of the sequencer which releases its keys frolicking in the heaviness and the zigzagging curves of the Berlin School. Little tinklings adorn this procession which will be cut by an ambient phase before returning in the form of rhythm. Good Berlin School, but I heard better! Full of woosh, like singing winds in the stigmata of a cave, and effects of knocks, Dust to Nebula <> Self Replicating Forevers is a long phase of claustrophobic vibes that flows into the bouncy sequencing structure of Curved Attraction Reprise 80. The music really adopts this new orientation of the 80's with a sequencer that has a harmonic aim while the moods decide otherwise. A short title that is the image of this perfect incoherence of an album whose audacity requires some listening, and a hard work for an open mind, but which will seduce the most tenacious.
Sylvain Lupari (March 25th, 2019) ***½**
Available at Nothing But Noise's Bandcamp