La Martyre

Description

It took the Finistère trio Baston six years to release their first album, Primates, at the end of 2019. The band, joined by a fourth member on keyboards in 2018, then casually broke a three-year absolute silence with a punchy first LP, revealing hypnotic and perfectly mastered motorik rock, unanimously praised by the specialized press upon its release. A two-date international tour (a dive bar in Brest and the Levitation festival in Angers) and three Facebook posts later, the band surprised everyone with a second album titled La Martyre, featuring no less than eight new tracks, composed remotely via Google Drive during yet another lockdown, then recorded in La Roche Maurice (29) in the garage of Simon Magadur's parents, the band's keyboardist. The track titles all exclusively refer to nightclubs in northern Finistère. Far from their sunny garage pop beginnings in 2013, Baston continues to carve out a path of cold, hypnotic, and haunting music, where keyboards take an increasingly prominent role, from composition to mixing. Influenced by Cold Pumas, Drame, and Beak, Baston's music skillfully weaves between German psychedelia, current English post-punk, and new wave, effortlessly avoiding the pitfall of stylistic exercise to impose its own unique identity. Baston manages to sound fresh in 2022, certainly still isn't at the forefront of music marketing, but offers here, and this is the essential part, a new sonic uppercut in an already impeccable discography.