This special bundle includes the following LPs

France / Temple Solaire "Voyage Spectral"
France "Do Den Haag Church"
France "Meltdown of Planet Earth"

Over the course of the last decade, Standard In-Fi has taken on the task of illuminating some of the most exciting currents of underground music in France. With a carefully curated catalog, specialising in material from across a vast range of fields - drone, field recordings, traditional, experimental, and rock - they’ve quickly risen as a label to watch. Running like a thread through Standard In-Fi’s output is the music of France, the Repetitive-Drone trio of Jeremie Sauvage, Mathieu Tilly, Yann Gourdon, founded in Valence, 2005. The label’s latest batch takes a deep dive into the band’s incredible sound, bringing out three brilliant LPs, Voyage Spectral a never before issued body of recordings made with Temple Solaire in 2013, and long awaited reissues of two of their most striking albums to date, 2009's Do Den Haag Church, and 2015’s Meltdown of Planet Earth. With each of them offering a distinct exploration at the visionary boundaries of psyche, drone, and metronomic minimalism, if you haven’t checked out this band, your mind is about to be blown.

France is the trio (hurdy gurdy, bass, drums) of Yann Gourdon, Mathieu Tilly, and Jeremie Sauvage, founded in Valence back in 2005. Over the last 14 years they've been delving into the dark folds of drone and experimentalism, collaboratively breathing new life into these territories or sound.

The first release in Standard In-Fi’s latest batch dedicated to the band ,Voyage Spectral, comprises a never before issued body of recordings made with Temple Solaire - the Industrial / noise / dark ambient project from Strasbourg, France, made up of Bertrand Gaude on guitar and vocals, Mathieu Tilly on drums, and Bariz on bass - during late 2013. With two bands working in perfect complement to the other’s sound, the first half comprises the sprawling four part, Temple Solaire led Voyage Spectral, which stretches out into beautiful expanses of heavy, distortion laden psychedelia, rising toward walls of sound that touch on minimalism through the cohesion of blistering noise. The second part of Voyage Spectral is driven by France, stretching out into an immersive sheets of distorted hurdy gurdy drones, pushed ever forward by metronomic bass and drum lines, the repetition of which nails down a truly incredible hypnotic effect.

The following two release in Standard In-Fi’s France batch, reissues of the band’s Do Den Haag Church, and Meltdown of Planet Earth, from 2009 and 2015 respectively, each take different tonal and textural trajectories into the band’s singular sound, while remaining remarkably cohesive as a pair, almost appearing as two side of the same coin. They are snapshots into snapshot of what makes this project so thrilling - and an expansive universe of rhythm and tone, at times flirting at the outer borders of Tony Conrad's legendary collaboration with Faust (Outside the Dream Syndicate), grown for carefully considered constraint and control. Built around circular rhythms, trance inducing riffs, and microtonal variation, using only a minimal drum kit, bass and hurdy-gurdy, it propels the ear into new dimension of dark ecstaticism.

Once heard, these three excursions by France leave you certain that you’ve witnessed to one of the most exciting projects in experimental music working today. Weaving trance-inducing sonorities that call up the depths of the human spirit and soul, we’ve struggled to get them off the turntable once the needle dropped. Absolutely essential, and not to be missed.