Celebrating two decades of a remarkable career, Langue Hybride is the new album from one-man project THISQUIETARMY – the brainchild of Eric Quach. The new album was conceived and written in under a month, while THISQUIETARMY was in residence at the Centre d’Experimentation Muscial (CEM) in the region of Saguenay – Lac-St-Jean, Quebec. Inspired by a residency that saw Eric working with a range of disparate musicians, the title of the album refers both to the multiple languages represented in Quebec, and the multiple musical languages spoken by the musicians he encountered, with the resultant five-track album boldly crossing genre lines at will.
The album opens with the sanguine drone of Les Rayons Cosmiques, which recalls the richly textured experiments of the In The Fishtank series, crossed with the haunting soundtrack work of Bear McCreary. With the eerie strings evoking a dank, fog-draped landscape sitting at the edge of an unseen expanse of water, it is music for the night time, and music for the imagination. Swelling over its seven-minute runtime to take in elements of neo-folk, post-rock, and electronica, it finally takes shape as a stuttering monster, underpinned by tightly coiled percussive elements, as a range of instruments flit through the mix. From the darkness, it seems, comes light, for the latter half has an airy quality, as if escaping from the imagined landscape of the opening bars, and it’s impossible not to feel your senses take flight as the pace continues to quicken.
Following so elegant an opening track, the brutally distorted guitars of Respirer l’instabilité come as something of a shock, bringing the listener back to earth as crushing riffs abound. Heavy, but not necessarily dark, the speaker-wrecking tones are offset by arcing lead lines and soaring violin passages, the end result somewhere between Khanate and Neil Young in the chain of inspiration, the innate humanity of the latter emerging as a stronger force than the relentless nihilism of the former. It’s a remarkable piece of music and when, at its heart, we find a moment of calm, we are pleased to bask in the simple beauty of the strings. However, it is not to the storm that we return, but rather a post-jazz-funk workout driven by electronic percussive elements, with the gruelling riffs of the song’s opening only returning as a coda, still overwhelming, but somehow lighter of touch and less ominous than hitherto. It’s a stunning musical and emotional journey, and it leaves the listener somehow cleansed in its wake.
For the third track, Les Radicaux Libres we return to the eerie soundtrack stylings of the opening piece. With strings flitting through a dense squall of post-jazz percussion and ambient textures, elements of Sonic Youth (especially via their SYR series), Miles Davis (circa Bitch’s Brew), early Pink Floyd, and Aphex Twin can be found as Eric slowly deconstructs the very essence of contemporary music, exposing its primordial roots amidst glacial strings and carefully contained feedback. Even the addition of a rhythm, played on the bass, fails to bring the music fully into focus, and we find ourselves drifting into a void, the only light falling from distant and unreachable stars.
Once again catching the listener unawares, the beautiful descending motif of Organismes en Aérobiose, picked out on the guitar, could easily announce the beginning of an as-yet unheard Radiohead track, although it turns away at the last minute to embrace a post-progressive sound that combines the tremolo washed soundscapes of Mike Oldfield with the epic explorations of King Crimson. However, those classic influences find themselves ground under a sonic assault of devastating power, a wall of static and noise slowly eclipsing the melody, with the central rhythm slowly reasserting itself to drive a post-metal finale that recalls the vital and vibrant early works of Mogwai.
This unique album ends with the haunting neo-folk of Solastalgie Impalpable. A lengthy, fifteen-minute exploration, it moves from its pastoral opening to take in more riff-driven elements, before final devolving into a wave of pure noise that shimmers and sparkles against a background of static. Slowly building to an epic climax, the payoff is one last, monumental doom riff, played straight and supported by a wonderfully openhearted melody that packs a solid emotional punch. With the entire album leading to this point, it’s a glorious conclusion to a genuinely immersive experience.
We tend to think of heavy music as being associated with darkness. However, the remarkably free-roaming Langue Hybride combines extremity with a lightness of spirit that leaves you feeling somehow brighter and more alive at the album’s conclusion. Free from the constraints of genre, although a number of bands are referenced across this review, the album’s closest antecedents are the work of contemporary soundtrack composers, with each piece evoking images from some unseen movie. It is a startling effort, heartfelt, textured, and beautifully recorded. For those open to imaginative and expansive music, Langue Hybride is an essential album that only gets better with repeat listens. 10/10
