"On this new diptych, Spelterini widens the realm of possibilities even further, blending rock experiences with learned music, and forging new paths at the crossroads of post-punk and minimalist music. These two pieces, just under twenty minutes each, explore delightful points of friction between contrasting formats and temporalities, which stand in contrast to the sonic urgency at work, finding fragile points of balance between repetition, rupture, and explosion.

 

Named after the Italian tightrope walker Maria Spelterini, famous for crossing Niagara Falls several times on a wire in 1876, the quartet composed of Pierre-Antoine Parois, Arthur de La Grandière (members of Papier Tigre and La Colonie de Vacances), Meriadeg Orgebin, and Nico Joubo (two former members of Chausse Trappe) have a penchant for song titles borrowed from the fine points of Scrabble and unpredictable musical compositions, often spanning more than fifteen minutes. Listening to these epic constructions—at which you can decide whether they are more kraut-, noise-, geometric, math- or simply drone—one easily gets caught up and tossed around, to the point of delightfully losing track. Magnésie (white powder of magnesium oxide) opens with electric, thread-like rasping that converges into a drone, which the bass and drums weave together tightly at a brisk pace. This unstoppable rhythm gradually dons an ever-frenetic electric palimpsest, alternating bass monologues and layers of guitars, gradually leaning into saturation before slowing down and closing with a metallic hiccup.

 

Less fast-paced, the bouncy, precise, and haunting rhythm that forms the foundation of Hyomon-Dako (blue-ringed octopus) becomes more complex and is reinforced by a synthetic flatness, to which hypnotic, melodic guitar motifs respond. This irresistible motoric trip takes on surprisingly bright hues, begins a descent into a heavy darkness, and ends with a 50-second noise outro. Less radical than Paréidolie, the previous album, this third release from the quartet confirms Spelterini's status as a laboratory project, where the four musicians search for and find ingenious misalignments in their ever-evolving rock, reminiscent of cult acts like This Heat or the most experimental Kleg." - Christophe Taupin