Ruine — Nous Irons Plus Loin Sans Avancer Jamais

“Nous Irons Plus Loin Sans Avancer Jamais” is the third release from this relatively new project from the always creative & often progressive french HNW artist Julien Skrobek.  The release offers up four 10 minutes slices of  often stark yet varied walled noise, and the releases title roughly translates to “We Will go Further Without ever Advancing”…which is quite a nicely bleak & hopeless title for the release.

The release comes in the form of CDR release which comes inside a dvd case that features on it’s front cover a great simply & stark line drawn picture by Andreas Brandal( of Flesh Coffin, Hour Of The Wolf, ect)- the picture is of tree trunk shaped like flowing mass of blacked thick dashers that slowly lessen then disappears towards the bottom of the split trunk like shape- I think this nicely captures the stark & often slightly caught & panicked urgency of most of the tracks on offer here.  Also with the DVD comes a poem by surrlist French poet Guillaume Apollinaire- the poems called "Toujours"( which means Always in english ),  and the peoms  first line is roughly the title of this release.

So moving onto the ‘walls’ themselves , and as already mentioned there are four tracks on offer here, each is untitled & each lasts dead on the ten minute mark. The first track is a mixture of repetitive rubbing ‘n’ muffled texturing which laid under by this stark, juddering ‘n’ slightly panicked static texture- to me the track brings to mind something endless trying to get up a slippery or smooth surface, but never getting any further no matter how much it tries.

Track number two is built around taut higher pitched  fixed juddering ‘n’ grating tonality that’s underfed by a slower & less urgent muffling scuttling tone- again the track brings to mind something been stuck & trying to get out, but the lower tone suggest it’s starting to tire of it's efforts.

Track three presents a more chilling & claustrophobic feel, yet there still some tension & lessened panic here. The ‘walls’ built around a bleak flow of hacking & juddering cold static textures, which have some crisper that equally bleak tonality flowing under them

And lastly track four is built around revolving static like loops of texture that weaved in by harsher ‘n’ hissing grains of static. And to me this track suggest all panicked is over, and your slowly but surely been swallowed & corroded away by brutal crackle & hiss of the static or your situation….the track both pained & oddly soothing too.

This is yet another very worthwhile & brutally rewarding release from Mr Skrobek- it’s always a pleasure to listen to & review his work, as he clearly puts so much thought & effort  into everything he puts out, and with out doubt he’s one of the most consistent HNW artists working in the European walled noise scene.