Foudre!

“Voltæ (Chthulucene)” is the sixth opus by FOUDRE!, a trio featuring Frédéric D. Oberland (Oiseaux-Tempête), Romain Barbot (Saåad), and Paul Régimbeau (Mondkopf). As the first work recorded in studio, “Voltæ (Chthulucene)” is the virtuosic result of a recording session orchestrated by Camille Jamain, sound engineer and electro-acoustician. The album emerges as a powerful electronic masterpiece, consisting of 8 tracks whose narrative dimension evokes the score of a sci-fi movie, transporting us through the labyrinths of a neo-Lovecraftian vision, into a post-AKIRA world where human and non-human life could (re)become possible, where all forms of (sur)living beings could cohabit once again...

Since their purely exhilarating experience at the Visions Festival in 2019, FOUDRE! has undergone a delightful metamorphosis. The creative forces of the three-headed monster get unleashed. The musicians seek less the mental than the physical, embracing a frantic, corporeal, and direct turn. With “Voltæ (Chthulucene)”, the trio, identified as drone ambient, takes a twist resolutely post-techno. Emancipatory alloy of English rave, punk urgency, and electronica, with strange and electrifying echoes of ancient trad sounds. Hybrid and telepathic orchestra, composed of analog synthesizers and modular systems organically connected to acoustic instruments (baglama, winds, percussion, vocals), forming a kind of neural network twinkling at the heart of the night.

Between contemplation, lightning flashes and illumination : the pulse, the rhythm. Hallucinated time fraction, progressing through a 3D landscape, stroboscopic and technicolor effects. A tale of struggles and resistances on universal and microscopic scale, images of cybernetic fauna and flora, a psychedelic futuristic delirium where hybrid characters of human/machine/vegetable could start to dance, mutate, and merge within everything around them.

An intensity, an elegance reminiscent of Pita’s records on Editions Mego, the originality and intelligence of the music of Autechre, the legendary electronic abstract duo from Manchester, the energy and fervour of Black Dice, the technoid noise rock trio from Brooklyn, as well as the softness and beauty of the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.