I confess that it has taken me a while to review the things I was sent in the past, including many Ciel Bleu et Petits Oiseaux tapes. So when I popped Fosse’s Le Traître Magnétique into my player I did not realize that it was yet another project of Julien Skrobek, one that looks to have had limited use over the past few years. This C90, but a single-sided 40 minutes, was released in 2015, and it features four tracks of fairly traditional harsh noise walls from the prolific artist.
Each are cut into neat 10 minute lengths, making for easy starts and stops to these walls. The first is “Les Tarifs du Bourreau,” one that at first seemed to be an incredibly simple texture with a very condensed line of static. But listening closer, one reveals some dynamics at play in this wall: there’s a rollicking bass tone rumbling in the back, and the up-front, trebly static licks away throughout the track, rarely changing but always churning slowly.
“La Rose et l’Ordre” transitions smoothly, keeping a similar bass tone but changing the static line to something a bit more prominent and crackly. The bass background seems to morph into more of a drone without dips or pops, but the static takes full center-stage. These crackles make for mesmerizing listening. “Géométrie Mitterrandienne” drops the overwhelming static crackles for a much more subdued and less voluminous static line, allowing a similar bass backdrop more room with a mid-to-fast-rumble. This one is one of my favorites on the release, minimal but crackling. Finally, “Le Plan du Temple, Tracé Par Dieu Lui-Même” rounds out this tape with a gyrating, in-your-face static line and a menacing bass line behind it that reminds me of a muffled metal band somewhere in the distance. The static is penetrative and extremely rough, making for a nice harsh listen, and it occasionally seems to get even more crunchy at times.
Overall this is a nice experiment from Skrobek with Fosse; his usually more long-form walls have been truncated to 10-minute affairs that, across a single-sided tape, blend in with each other to form a longer wall full of variation. Definitely check this tape out if you come across it.
GOOD ||||