RIN (vinyl)

Description

Rin means secret in Breton. Rin is also a record dotted with Breton idioms: Finvus, Askre, Balafenn, Brik. Monolithe Noir’s second album Moira (Kowtow Records, 2020) still invited listeners to chase away a few dusty demons, stir up the past, and left plenty of room for repetition, for the search for textures. And since each record is a search and sometimes also a way of contradicting what one had wanted to say at all costs before, Rin takes the opposite path to Moira. By breaking down barriers, by favoring movement, by forgiving mistakes and, ultimately, by having fun. Recorded and mixed between a cellar, two apartments and a family home, this third Monolithe Noir album became more porous to the environments in which it was conceived. Rin was made in tranquility and, for the first time, by four hands, with Yannick Dupont (Yokaï, Jahwar, Ottla) as the chosen accomplice. To let in light, a breath of air, and open up to a more supple, more alive, less metronomic way of writing music. Brittany, the desire to find it again and rediscover it, was central to the writing of the album and to the imagery that emerges from it. Hollow paths, knotted and rugged trees, carved coastlines, heathland, Brest, lonely villages, suburban areas, a nuclear power plant in the middle of the Monts d'Arrée. And as much bad weather as clear spells. Rin explores plenty of different landscapes but without trying to plant the listener in the middle of the forest. You can wander through it with your nose in the air, take deep breaths, then, as night falls, quicken your pace homeward. A hurdy-gurdy, made from salvaged materials gathered in the street, an old harmonium found at the end of a flea market, recorder flutes appear on Rin (alongside synthesizers, bass and drums) and carry on the presence of continuous sound while exploring other textures, more acoustic but still a little warped. If they were composed and refined in a spirit of calm, the tracks on Rin are still crossed by tensions, anger, lightning. One might perhaps hear, throughout this album, a voice that seems to speak to another, urging it to be more measured, but conflict is always present. The voice appears on Finvus and more discreetly on Brik and Landmaerck. Fleeting, it is not there to gather the instruments around it, but rather blends into them. Jawhar Basti comes to haunt barra bouge with a feverish, obsessive vocal. Mirabelle Gillis (Miossec, Hakim Hamadouche, François Joncour) slashes her violin with dissonant lines before tearing apart the clouds of a Barra Bouge that has become too oppressive.