The recording project of Brussels-based Antoine Pasqualini, Monolithe Noir offers an inscrutable blend of genres from folk, ambient and electronica to prog rock and Italian library music. Latest record Rin, out via Capitane Records and Humpty Dumpty Records later this month, embraces this cryptic spirit—Rin means ‘mystery’ or ‘secret’ in Breton—and thus represents both a development and contradiction of the previous Monolithe Noir releases.
Rin is an album rooted in the landscape of Brittany, inspired by the enigmatic forests and coastlines and moors but also by the human elements. The remote villages, the nuclear power plant within Monts d ́Arrée, the strange transitional spaces that lie between the rural and the urban. The manner in which the music allows the environment to seep into it marks it distinct from 2020’s Moira, finding Monolithe Noir newly amenable to the energies and moods of the surrounding world, though Rin is far from a simple recapitulation of Western France. Shot through the tracks is anger, tension, and no small amount of provocative defiance. The landscape might be leaching into the music and changing it, but Pasqualini ensures the opposite is true too.
Take latest single ‘Barra Bouge’, its steady rhythmic drumming allowing the track to coil tight like a spring. But the unerring purpose of its slow march is warped by some strange force, think Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England if it wasn’t in England at all. Jawhar Basti‘s vocals urge the fevered build as Mirabelle Gillis’s violin arcs across the dreamscape, a world of lightning and dense cloud always gathering toward its own thunderous end.
Rin is out on the 22nd July via Capitane Records and Humpty Dumpty Records and you can pre-order it now.
