Style: post-rock, modern classical, electronica (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Caspian, We Lost the Sea
Review by: Andy
Country: France
Release date: 25 April 2025
Before the end of my first listen of Bruit ≤’s debut album The Machine Is Burning and Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again, I knew it was to be my favorite post-rock album of all time. With remarkable orchestration helping to build rollicking, earth-shattering crescendos in each of its four tracks, The Machine Is Burning essentially solved post-rock’s “boring until the peak of the crescendo” problem. Bruit ≤ perfected the art of the crescendo as their greatest forebears had—Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor the obvious influences—but the plaintive moments before and after the buildups had the delicate strings, breakbeat influences, and even tasteful spoken word. The Machine Is Burning isn’t a flawless record, and neither is the followup The Age of Ephemerality—I dislike the spoken word snippets in “Data” and find the Orwell quote closing out the album to be a bit cliche… but that’s it. The Age of Ephemerality is two tiny spoken blemishes from being a perfect record.
For Bruit ≤, everything revolves around the crescendo. Tracks start slow—the string quartet of “Technoslavery / Vandalism,” the tape noises and strings of “Ephemeral,” the resplendent horns of “The Intoxication of Power”—and over the course of each track’s runtime, the songs build and build ever upwards like the Babylonians. Unlike the Tower of Babel, Bruit ≤ have succeeded at reaching God. Often the buildups start slow with the band adding layers to a motif they’ve begun. “Data” glides forward underneath Julien Aoufi’s breakbeat drumming performance—soon bubbling synths and strings become the focal point. Then spoken word and rolling guitars join the fray. Soon the simple breakbeat motif is an unstoppable sonic tidal wave.
In any Bruit ≤ track, the quartet reaches the climax with about three to five minutes left, a cathartic explosion of sound: pounding drumming, post-metal-y guitar riffs, wailing trem-picked lead guitar, strings and synths, and, new for The Age of Ephemerality, a full electric guitar ensemble that was recorded in the resonant space of Gesu’s Church. The peak is overwhelming, causing my chest to feel like it’s going to explode out of my body—I often forget to breathe during a Bruit ≤ track. Achieving a more extreme release is surely impossible, I think to myself each time Bruit ≤ reaches the apex of a crescendo, but while the wall of sound can hardly grow, they somehow maintain the roaring intensity for minutes at a time, an impossible display of sonic power and songwriting prowess. The Age of Ephemerality is rapturous, orgasmic, euphoric, and sublime.
The throughline of The Age of Ephemerality is an underlying tension between electronic and acoustic. Theophile Antolinos begins the album with his “tape soundscapes” which quickly give way to lush cello, viola, and violin. The soundscape the quartet creates is often abrasive and industrial, pummeling walls of sound accomplished through digital and electric means. Yet The Age of Ephemerality is an incredibly human record, the heavy parts marred by stellar orchestration and the softer parts heart-wrenching and honeyed (see the intro of “Technoslavery / Vandalism”). Bruit ≤ write music that captures intrinsically sublime human experiences: looking at a great work of art, experiencing isolation in grand natural vistas, the frisson of first listening to a Mahler symphony. My heart, body, soul, and mind are all nourished by The Age of Ephemerality as its unrestrained climaxes strike right between my ribs.
Bookending the moments of extreme maximalism on The Age of Ephemerality, the moments of simple placidity could be easily overlooked, but that would be a grave error as they hold gravitas that even the Godly climaxes miss: they act as a reminder there is beauty in everyday simplicity, not just the sublime experiences that Bruit ≤ peddle. These moments are a spiritual understanding unveiled throughout the course of the album. At the end of “Technoslavery / Vandalism,” a men’s choir hums a pulchritudinous Gregorian melody; the horns which triumphantly open “The Intoxication of Power” are bold, yes, but the role they play is simple and elegant, a stately start to the album’s emotional and literal finale. Don’t forget the smooth melody that begins the track in favor of the reprised version underneath the pummeling drums and ensemble of guitars—they are equally valuable for Bruit ≤’s songwriting and message.
The Age of Ephemerality is crystal clear, produced and performed beautifully, yet its an extremely raw album at its heart, an outpouring of emotion and rage. Every note is filled with intentionality, and the work’s unimaginably dramatic peaks and valleys not only match (or supplant) the best of post-rock but of music in general.
Recommended tracks: Progress / Regress, Technoslavery / Vandalism, The Intoxication of Power
You may also like: Galya Bisengalieva, Sunyata, Osvaldo Golijov
Final verdict: 9.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Pelagic Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Theophile Antolinos: Guitars, banjo, tape soundscape.
Julien Aoufi: Drums.
Luc Blanchot: Cello, programming, synth
Clément Libes: Bass, Baritone guitars, Bass VI, violin, viola, organ, piano, modular synth, programming
With:
Trumpet by Guillaume Horgue
French Horn by Benoît Hui
Trombonne by Igor Ławrynowicz
Bass trombone by Erwan Maureau
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