The Age of Ephemerality is a bold new offering from the French band BRUIT that you will not find on streaming platforms. It is out on April 25th.

Many bands and artists have an intense dislike of streaming platforms and the way they have destroyed earnings for music creators. BRUIT, the French word for NOISE, take it further and refuse to put any of their work up. If you look on Spotify all you will find (other than an older remix and a collaboration) is a track called ‘Parasite (The Boycott Manifesto).’ It explains how they view the entire music industry as counter-intuitive to art and how streaming has accelerated the decline. They also intensely distrust the whole set up around modern technology and question why humanity is allowing itself to slide into joyless servitude. You might have already guessed that this is not going to be a light pop-album. As a rule I would always rather listen to an interesting failure than an identikit nothingness. This album is neither a failure or a complete success, but there is so much effort and thought involved that you have to applaud the intentions and enjoy the highlights of it.

There are only five tracks here, but this is no EP. The last track alone weighs in at a whopping thirteen minutes and twelve seconds. Opening track ‘Ephemeral’ is a brisker three minutes and sets the tone. Over a series of synth tones a string section creeps in, setting out the battle between man, nature and technology. Intense drums crash in. Noise is indeed an apt name for this band, they produce intense walls of sound. For a comparison point clearly Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor spring to mind but that is more the superficiality of both being (mostly) bands without vocalists like BRUIT.

‘Data’ is more disconnected. The band comment that “Data explores the problem of mass surveillance and globalised manipulation through the digitisation of everything…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?” When the track solidifies several minutes in it is propulsive and captivating.

‘Progress_Regress’ is a mellower effort, again the string section (particularly the cello) brings the emotional centre to it. This is the progress, then all distorts again – the regression. ‘Techno-slavery_Vandalism’ has a moment of magic towards the back end when a choir, or synths programmed with choir sounds, appear elevating the experience.

In the creation process the band have used the places they were recording in as much as the instruments. A lot was recorded in an old church, at times making use of the original church organ, allowing a large amount of natural reverberation and echo. This concept of the space as an extra-instrument is most evident in the stunning live video for final track ‘The Intoxication of Power.’ The band state: “Like money, technology has become a power-grabbing tool whose effects are increasingly poisonous. This is the Intoxication of power, turning man’s future into a mountain of connected hubris. To illustrate this, we shot a live session accompanied by a classical ensemble, 100 feet underground in a construction site in progress.” The result is at times breathtaking. If the rest of the album had consistently hit these heights it would have been an absolute masterpiece. Whilst it doesn’t quite get there it remains a conceptually strong work of art that paints large scale scenes in your mind. Major soundtrack work surely awaits any of this group who want it. Out on the 25th April, download it from Bandcamp or seek it out on physical media.