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Doubtful Sounds

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Sun Stabbed, “In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni” (Doubtful Sounds, 2021)

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It has been roughly a decade since this French duo of gnarled guitar enthusiasts last surfaced as Sun Stabbed and I have certainly missed them, though Thierry Monnier and Pierre Faure’s similarly excellent La Morte Young project helped fill the void nicely. Aside from the different line-ups, the main difference between the two projects is that this one is kind of a direct homage to some of New Zealand’s most iconic purveyors of blacked drones and noisy guitars. 

While no discussion of that subject would be complete without Campbell Kneale, it is The Dead C and the woefully underheard Surface of the Earth that explicitly provide the most inspiration here. Characteristically, Monnier and Faure are admirably up to the task of continuing that fine tradition, as In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni is a feast of manipulated feedback, burned-out wreckage, and simmering drones. Occasionally it can be eerily beautiful and haunting, but I also like the parts that resemble an onstage brawl between Skullflower and Sunn O))). This is an instant noise/drone guitar classic.

The album opens with its most slow-burning pleasure, as “Le Soleil Couchant De Cette Cité Laissait Quelques Lueurs” opens with a single distorted tone that lazily twists and undulates for several minutes. As that note drones on, a haze of feedback and overtones starts to form around it and the higher pitches begin to resemble Tuvan throat singing. Eventually the central drone is fleshed out a bit, but the piece continues to feel like a single smoldering and gently twisting drone loaded with seething tension. It is a beautifully crafted piece, but I appreciated it even more once I translated the title (roughly “The setting sun of this city left some light”), as I started envisioning all of the slowly unfurling tendrils of sound as streaks of deep red and bruised purple in the darkening wake of a sunset (definitely made me wish I had synesthesia). 

The following “La Sensation De L’Ecoulement Du Temps” is another slow-building masterpiece of controlled violence and superhuman patience, as ghost trails of feedback lazily wind across a landscape of drones and gently sizzling and crackling amp noise. The neat twist this time around is that the spectral feedback and the underlying drones both cohere into rhythmic patterns that are as languorously hypnotic as any Indian raga I have heard. Sun Stabbed differ from raga in some very significant ways though, particularly in the passing storm of stuttering, blown-out distortion that soon consumes the song. 

Yet another perfectly titled piece (roughly “So here is a civilization that burns, capsizes and sinks in its entirety”) closes this album with a convulsive catharsis of roiling guitar noise and buzzing, low-end hum. It is not quite on the same level as the previous two pieces, but compensates with its comparative brevity and provides an enjoyably volcanic finale.

Samples can be found here.

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La Morte Young, “A Quiet – Earthquake Style” (Doubtful Sounds, 2018)

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I am ashamed to say that I slept on this volcanic French ensemble’s woefully underappreciated and face-melting debut album when it came out, but I have since embraced them as one of the finest purveyors of squalling guitar noise around. With this, their second formal full-length, the quintet expand the borders of their expected firestorm into some darker and more idiosyncratic territory. Such an excursion deeper into the outré is hardly surprising, however, given that Joëlle Vinciarelli collaborated with My Cat is an Alien just a few months before this album was recorded (it is impossible to imagine that anyone could spend time with the Opalio brothers and not emerge with some interesting new ideas about how music can be made). The results of that evolution are a bit of a mixed success here, as the band’s more simmering and lysergic side yields some interesting results, but sacrifices the awesome visceral power of their more explosively kinetic moments.

The album opens in extremely promising fashion, as the title piece erupts from the speakers with a flurry of skittering drum fills, blown-out bass rumble, and a howling cacophony of guitar noise.I am always a huge fan of wild, virtuosic drumming and Talweg’s Eric Lombaerd absolutely kills it on “A Quiet – Earthquake Style,” unleashing an absolute earthquake of his own on the kit that would make Chris Corsano proud. With that totally unhinged foundation, the rest of the band could probably play just about anything and it would sound cool as hell, but the full-on noise assault that results is a particularly impressive one rich with scrabbling strings and strangled feedback.

There is one twist that separates the piece from characteristically explosive business as usual, however, as there are some queasily hazy and swooping vocals that are reminiscent of Roberto Opalio’s voice-as-instrument falsetto. That touch only surfaces on this one piece, though a MCIAA-esque use of toys as a sound source surfaces throughout the album as well. The latter fits quite seamlessly into the band’s sound, however—far more significant is the decision to eschew drums on “Heavens Cover The Abyss” and “Memory Awake.” I can understand the motivation for that decision though, as Lombaerd’s hurricane of limbs makes it impossible for the rest of the band to explore nuance and subtlety. When Lombaerd’s drumming is absent, I definitely miss it, but “Heavens Cover the Abyss” is nevertheless an eerily haunting and ingenious foray into ritualistic-sounding drone, as the central theme of dissonantly wraith-like guitars moaning and keening above a murky throb is bleakly beautiful.

The following “Some Ghastly Fright” continues that flirtation with vaguely ritualistic and occult-sounding drone, as a chant-like voice drifts over a smoldering ruin of shuddering and sputtering guitar noise. Lombaerd returns to his kit, but in conspicuously restrained form, embellishing the smoldering sea of distortion with a slow-motion tumble of thumping toms.It is quite an excellent piece, inverting the band’s characteristically feral formula into a slow-burning rumble that culminates in a crescendo of grinding and crumpling metal. The closing “Memory Awake” is the most dramatic departure of all, however, as squiggling and squirming synths unfold and distort like a deeply lysergic horror movie soundtrack. It actually sounds like the work of a completely different band altogether, which is a bit perplexing, but it is a strange and intriguingly hallucinatory piece nonetheless.

A Quiet – Earthquake Style is generally more of an experimental and transitional work than an unambiguous success, but I definitely appreciate that La Morte Young have avoided repeating themselves and found some curious and unexpected ways to expand their aesthetic boundaries. They were just a bit too ambitious in those regards than would be ideal, as most of the album conspicuously avoids playing to band’s strengths. I have already mentioned my appreciation for Lombaerd’s virtuosity, but Thierry Monnier and Pierre Faure (both from Sun Stabbed) are truly gifted architects of sculpted guitar noise and all three seem to focus their talents elsewhere for much of the album.

That said, I still enjoy A Quiet – Earthquake Style quite a lot, as La Morte Young seem to put a lot more work into their albums than similar bands. That is not to say that I have any problem with Keiji Haino’s passion for spontaneity or The Dead C’s deliberate slovenliness, but it is a legitimately pleasant surprise when a noisy band makes such a concerted effort to edit and mix their cacophony into something that feels like a thoughtfully constructed album rather than a mere document of a performance. La Morte Young are an excellent band and they record all too infrequently, so I am glad they are so focused when they surface. As far as I am concerned, their first album remains their definitive statement (and an underheard classic), but Earthquake Style is an appealing and welcome broadening of La Morte Young’s scope.

Samples can be found here.
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Sun Stabbed, “Des lumières, des ombres, des figures” (Doubtful Sounds, 2011)

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I have not heard anything from this French duo since 2008’s The World Upside-Down, but their gently roiling and shimmering guitar drone made a big impression on me. On this, their first full-length vinyl release, Pierre Faure and Thierry Monnier caught me a bit off-guard by taking a much more minimal and much less overtly musical approach. It definitely took me a while to warm to these changes, as their new arsenal of buzzes, hums, and whirs does not offer much in the way of immediacy, melody, or rhythm. However, there is still quite a lot to like here, as Sun Stabbed have made some significant creative progress over the last few years—it just takes some faith and patience to appreciate it.

The most notable aspect of this album is that Faure and Thierry rarely use their guitars in the way they are intended to be used, opting to avoid almost anything resembling a clearly picked/fretted note or chord. The opening piece, “Les terre avec des bruits,” is probably as traditional as Sun Stabbed ever get on the album, as it is built upon a bed of distorted, metallic drones and subtly quivering feedback. It at least sounds like it is emanating from some guitars. That bed of quavering tones is essentially all there is though, aside from some occasional finger scrapes: the meat of the piece is simply the oscillations caused by the gently shifting harmonies. 

The next piece, “Ce petit monde en dérive,” raises the volume and the dissonance a bit, but the biggest difference is that the feedback is allowed to snarl and break-up a bit amidst a backdrop of quasi-industrial creaks, clicks, and hisses. Then, around the midpoint, an actual melodic figure appears: a submerged-sounding lattice of bell-like tones. Unexpectedly, it even sticks around for the remainder of the piece, struggling to stay audible beneath a cacophony of guitar noise and a host of other sounds that resemble processed machine noises and pneumatic doors. Bizarrely, there are also some occasional snippets that sound like a calliope buried in the mix. No significant progression occurs before it winds to a close, but the constantly shifting balance between the various components is rather engaging.

The second half of the album begins with “La fin, on l’a devinée,” which combines crackling and swooping noises in a way that approximates a roomful of malfunctioning short-wave radios. Again, some ruined-sounding guitar shimmer and calliope periodically drift through the static-y, garbled fog. Notably, it also sounds like someone begins playing an actual note with a pick for the first time on the record, but it is just one note insistently repeated and tensely bent to create dissonant oscillations with the surrounding hum. 

The fourth and final song on the album, “Les sociétés secrètes et leurs agissements,” begins nicely with some layered droning guitar snarl and an ugly low-end throb. It is difficult to tell what else is happening, but I am pretty sure that someone begins amplifying power tools, like perhaps a power-sander or a saw. It’s a very neat effect, as the harsh grinding sounds provide an uncomfortable counterbalance to the increasingly turbulent guitar droning beneath them and even form an uneven pulse of sorts. The piece continues to deftly shift for the rest of its duration, cohering into a stuttering rumble that is regularly rended by periodic squawks of guitar noise or jarring powertool grinding. It’s definitely the strongest piece on the album, but it should be noted that it is not particularly new, having surfaced before on the out-of-print Inner End of the Coils compilation (Nothing Out There) in 2009.

If this had been the first Sun Stabbed release that I had heard, I probably would not have paid close enough attention to it to enjoy it all that much. These guys certainly aren’t the first folks to focus their attention on all of the electric guitar’s peripheral sounds (fingers sliding along a string, amplifier hum, feedback, pick-up noise, etc.), but they are pretty uniquely skilled at ingeniously harnessing and sculpting those sounds into something vibrant and compelling. 

However, a great deal of this record’s success lies in my being drawn in by the mysteries of the process. As such, Des lumières, des ombres, des figures has somewhat limited appeal despite its imaginative and skillful execution: Pierre and Thierry completely eschew any kind of melodic development or progression here in favor of tension and texture. This is an impressive work, but it is a hard one to love—I still very much prefer The World Upside-Down. Nevertheless, this release is a very promising development. A few more concessions like melody or warmth would be welcome, but it is hard to fault a band for boldly and skillfully testing the limits of their sound.

Listen here.