Steppe is a remarkable collaboration between This Quiet Army (the adopted name of Canadian experimental musician Eric Quach) & Tom Malmendier (on drums percussion, toys and objects). Since 2005, according to the official webpage for the project, TQA have put out nearly fifty releases on a variety of labels, with this latest effort emerging through Norwegianism Records. Lasting sixty minutes and hosting only four tracks, Steppe is not an easy record, but the expansive drone (beautifully reorded by Charly Buss and Eric Quach) is eerily addictive and, underpinned by Tom’s jazz-infused percussion, seeks to take the listener on a psychedelic journey across distant landscapes.
The album opens with a twenty-two-minute track entitled On A Marche Sur le Soleil. Emerging from a haze of drone, Malmendier’s influence is immediately apparent as esoteric percussion is scattered across a dense wall of spacey, atmospheric noise. The piece ebbs and flows building, through the use of dense layers of reverb, to an almighty wall of lush ambience that seems to hover about an inch in front of the speakers, blazing with radiant intensity. Played loud, it has the potential to blot out the everyday, and it seems that there is no other way to play this record if you are to appreciate the myriad nuances that lie at he heart of the soundscapes the duo create. However, as richly textured as it might be, a raging wall of noise is not sustainable over twenty-two minutes and, just as the layers of sound reach a peak, so Eric draws the listener off in a new, prog-infused direction that sounds like Pink Floyd’s The Endless River being covered by Mogwai and Lenny White. The result is a striking juxtaposition between Eric’s increasingly fluid digressions and Tom’s ever-more unhinged percussive cycles, the latter proving more hypnotic than contrary, giving the track a cinematic sweep that evokes the barren landscape of the album’s cover. The second piece, the only track to comfortably fit under ten minutes, is A Dos de Cheval Tout La Nuit, a dense, heavily-treated wall of guitar that seems to expand outwards at remarkable speed before finally collapsing back in upon itself, leaving only a vapour trail of feedback in its wake.
In contrast, A Midi Le Vent Donne Soif ripples like a stream in the mid-morning sun, the light refracted by the ever-changing patterns of the water. Sensibly, Tom restrains himself at the outset, allowing the guitar time to breathe before slowly bringing in an airy percussion that perfectly compliments Eric’s mesmerising tones. Like latter-day Swans, where Gira’s repeat-and-augment formula allowed for pieces to slowly expand until all else was blotted out, so here the volume continues to grow as Tom’s percussive excursions become ever more excitable, the melody finally eclipsed in a welter of feedback and drone that seems to rise from the very core of the earth such is its leaden intensity. The album’s final piece, On Court Le Yeux Fermes, emerges from its predecessor as layers of snaking noise shift and swirl over Tom’s manic excursions around the kit. Rather than build continuously to one final denouement, the duo allow the piece to traverse a mountainous landscape, achieving ever-higher peaks each time they allow the music to break explosively free, before allowing the album to slowly drift away into the ether.
Beautifully packaged in a fold-out digi-pack (with stunning photography from Eric Quach) that adheres to Peter Gabriel’s philosophy of allowing the artwork to speak for itself, Steppe is in every sense one of those records that needs to be appreciated in its entirety. Even the song titles are represented in the form of a poem (written by Anne LaFleur), only adding to the sense of majesty that surrounds this simple package of paper and plastic. Put the CD in the player, absorb the enigmatic imagery on the cover and then drift away, allowing TQA and Tom Malmendier to take you on a journey of the imagination. An unforgettable trip you’ll want to repeat, Steppe is a hauntingly wonderful piece of music that continues to entice the listener no matter how many times you play it through. 9
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