Year: 2024
Label: Zoharum

You all know that reviews are totally, 100% subjective, right? Well, notwithstanding that technical errors in production and musicianship can be objectively critiqued, e.g. if there are flaws in reproduction or performance; but apart from that, whether an album is good or bad is entirely up to the listener, and a reviewer is in no way superior to or above yer regular Joe listening to the album in that sense. Our opinions are still just our opinions; hopefully we’re just able to express them a bit more informatively and eloquently than people who’ve never written a review.

I’m not bringing this up as some kind of disclaimer or pre-emptive attempt to defuse a situation. It’s just that listening to French Brume’s new album Syncronicity & Wandering Current, I’m reminded very strongly of it. I mean, obviously the good people at Zoharum found the album good enough to release.

I think it’s infuriatingly awful.

Essentially, Syncronicity & Wandering Current is an album of experimental electronics which pushes the envelope for what can be called music or an album. The entirety of this hefty 58 minute long album is contained on one track, even though it is divided into three parts. So it’s one song (or whatever the appropriate equivalent is in experimental music), but at the same time three.

And within this hour, the album is a baffling disarray of musical elements. There’s dark industrial ambience, glitching sounds, sound collages, found sounds and musique concrete, samples, visiting musicians playing actual music on their instruments (including infuriating avantgarde jazz trumpeteering). At times, for minutes at a time, the album can present the listener with serene, beautiful and appealing fragments of music – only to barrage them at the next moment with cacophonous, incongruous layers of environmental noise. Just as a nice passage is becoming something, Brume will cut it abruptly and shift to something else.

According to the promo sheet, Syncronicity & Wandering Current is a conceptual album, which builds a narrative in interaction with the listener. How I interpret this is that the listener is encouraged to find a common thread running through all the disparate elements of the album, trying to glean some kind of personally meaningful whole from pieces that are like shredded newspaper clippings.

I kind of get that, but at the same time… argh. Syncronicity & Wandering Current is just a headache for me. It’s a maelstrom of information overflow, of sensory overload and incoherent signals crowding the brain.

But this is where I refer back to the opening paragraph. Music is inherently subjective. One man’s gold is another man’s turd, and vice versa. This is especially pronounced in all forms of unconventional, experimental music that dares to forge its creation without moulds. What I mean is that, for example, virtually all rock based music follows certain rules and progresses in a rather predictable fashion; and familiarity itself will have an impact on how people react to it. Experimental music such as this takes away that crutch.

The listener is left to fend for themselves, to fathom by themselves something that might be unfathomable.

Now that this review is written, I will be very happy to never listen to Syncronicity & Wandering Current ever again. I am sick of the disjointed, disharmonious, disparate chaos of the album. And at the same time I recognize more than with any album before, that there will be people with diametrically opposite opinions. To some people, this album will be a revelation. Some will listen to this album, and piece by piece build a narrative whole that means something to them, instead of just becoming frustrated.

And if you believe you could be one of those people: ignore everything I said above. Put Syncronicity & Wandering Current on.

Visit Brume’s official website