Experimental post-rock quartet BRUIT ≤ share a soaring new track, “Data“, which takes their previous track’s instrumental fury and reshapes it; cannibalizing the grinding cacophony and spitting out a delirious, DnB-like dirge before this too implodes in a hail of scattered digital artefacts before a blissfully bittersweet piano motif plays us out; a haunting analogue of the track’s synthesized introduction.
BRUIT ≤ comments, “‘Data’ explores the problem of mass surveillance and globalized manipulation through the digitization of everything. Driven by an urgent drum & bass beat, the track confronts electronic elements, electric guitar and cello, with a brass ensemble and bicentennial organ, diluting what is organic and what’s not. Through this process, we tried to illustrate the confusion we feel every day when faced with fake news, AI generated content or targeted advertising… What’s still social about our network? What’s still organic about our relationship with the world?”
As the ethics of major streaming services and social media outlets come to the fore, BRUIT ≤ prepare for the timely release of their colossal new album. A philosophical, poetic and political reflection on our insatiable fascination with technology, a dependence as reverential as it is increasingly alienating and exploitative, The Age Of Ephemerality is a seismic collision of old and new, of sounds organic and electric, with the trailblazing four-piece capturing the resultant symphony in all its chaotic, confrontational glory.
A cautionary sonic exploration of society’s deference to the algorithm, their new album will not be available on major international streaming platforms. Much like the rest of the band’s discography, the album reinforces the collective’s staunch boycott of Spotify; a response to the platform’s consistently diminishing artist payout policies as well as billionaire CEO Daniel Ek’s recent investment in the arms trade. Written in the mountains and recorded in a church, the album is BRUIT ≤ experimenting with capturing the sound of physical space as if it were an instrument in its own right; as something that can never be artificially generated or digitally replicated.
Amplifying contemporary instruments, tools and tech in a building hundreds of years old; synths, drums, strings, an eight-strong electric guitar orchestra made up of friends and collaborators from the Toulouse scene (Slift, Plebian Grandstand, Mourir, Zelezna, Orme) and the original, 1864 church organ collide in an incendiary aural statement that spurns society’s reliance on technocratic tendencies in favor of celebrating togetherness, the power of community and the creative inspiration of the moment.
