According to the liner notes, the new direction of French Canadian
noisemakers Et Sans is one that “seamlessly intermingle[s]
experimental based psychedelic-pop with vintage industrial music,
with a nod towards classic Kraut Rock of the 70s.” And I’m
excited, if a bit perplexed as to what exactly that might mean.
Will it sound like Can, or maybe The Soft Machine, or maybe somewhere
in between? It didn’t. Psychedelic pop it is not, although
the extra-dimensional instrumentals are compelling, and oftentimes
even downright frightening.
The four-track excursion begins with “La Chosen unevenue Du
L’amonc element spectral Du Mal.” If you expect an immediate
psych-pop freakout, you’ll be left hanging. “La Chosen”
is no pop song, no psych anything, but instead a foray into minimal
ambience, with ethereal reverberating drips that you might hear
while spelunking in a cave occupied by, I don’t know, let’s
say some ages old Lovecraftian cult, complete with an undercurrent
of hypnotic low-volume groans. Interesting, but not exactly Pink
Floyd circa Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Then comes “Une Bouche Vegetale, Des Creatures Soufflent dessecetions
Du Tout Fout Le Camp.” An online translation program tells
me that this means, roughly, “A Vegetable Mouth, Creatures
Blow dessecetions Of the Fout Whole the Camp,” which certainly
can’t be accurate, and makes me wish that I spoke French.
These ears of mine give me a pretty distinct idea that the first
track was more of a long-running, mood-determining introduction
than a proper song, with the first few seconds of “Une Bouche”
acting as the payoff. A repetitive and imposing drum churn that
could very well have been pulled from a Throbbing Gristle album
is accompanied by a barrage of electronically altered shrieks and
screams that blur the line between voice and something else, something
otherworldly that comes from a bad, bad place. Along with these
discomfiting sounds of torture, “muthafucka” pervades
the track, not at all in a Wu-Tang Clan way, but in a very Hieronymus
Bosch sort of way, invoking a wind-whipped atmospheric Armageddon
that made me forget the promise of “psychedelic pop elements”
altogether in the interest of industrial terror.
From that initial sustained blast of chaos rises what one might
consider the advertised “nod to Kraut Rock of the ‘70s,”
a multi-tentacled nod from C’thulhu, maybe, that makes one
wonder what Julian Cope might think of the comparison (that being
the former The Teardrop Explodes! frontman and krautrock aficionado,
whose out-of-print 1995 book/scene retrospective, Krautrocksampler,
can be found available for purchase online at the approximate cost
of a single human soul.) But it’s there in the out-of-control
spiraling jumble of blistering electronic screeches and whines that
tenuously cling to the main current of music, and in the understated
vocals that sound like they’ve been cut apart and pieced back
together.—Matthew Stern
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