In rien de ça, Bruno Duplant continues his uncompromising exploration of sonic minimalism, offering a work that is as much about listening as it is about the audible elements themselves. Rather than delivering melody or rhythm in any traditional sense, Duplant strips away gesture until only the bones of sound remain—fragile structures suspended in air, held together by tension and an almost ascetic restraint. The title, borrowed from the language of negation, sets the tone: a refusal not just of excess, but of the very need to declare what the music “is.” What unfolds here is an auditory space where nearly tangible silences are pierced by faint tones, textured hums, and the sudden emergence of a sonic detail that vanishes as quickly as it came. These moments become events, their rarity magnifying their weight.

Rien de ça plays with perception. Long stretches of near-quiet recalibrate the listener’s threshold, ensuring that even the smallest intrusion—a scratch, a breath, a mechanical click—blooms into significance. Duplant seems to compose not for an audience accustomed to background listening, but for those willing to be inside a space where each second is charged with the potential for a subtle shift. The Zappak imprint, known for championing work at the intersection of composition and radical listening practices, supports this aesthetic perfectly. The album feels like it could exist equally well as a gallery installation, unfolding in its own time, indifferent to conventional structures. The texture is not static, however; beneath the surface, micro-movements suggest a hidden logic, a choreography of sound particles moving through shadow.

There’s an undeniable physicality here—not in loudness, but in the bodily awareness the record demands. One hears the air between notes, the compression of breath in the recording space, the faint distortion of something almost but not quite mechanical. Duplant’s touch is evident in the way each element is placed with surgical precision, offering neither narrative closure nor emotional catharsis. The music simply is, and in doing so refuses the listener any escape into familiar patterns. Listening to rien de ça becomes an act of immersion into a fluctuating territory where absence is the primary medium. In this work, silence is not the opposite of sound but its equal partner; stillness is not emptiness but density. The album’s duration itself feels sculptural—time molded by moments of emergence and withdrawal.

Beyond its minimalist core, the record holds a quiet political weight, resisting the compulsive demand for content, clarity, and immediacy. It asks for slowness in a culture addicted to speed, for patience in an age of restless consumption. Zappak’s decision to release rien de ça signals an ongoing commitment to work that challenges both artist and listener, casting sound as spatial art and listening as a prolonged encounter with uncertainty. In Bru­no Duplant’s hands, absence becomes articulation, and negation becomes its own resonant statement.