4 out of 5

Label: Les Disques Bongo Joe, Three:four Records

Produced by: d’incise (recorded by, mixed by)

Massive. Utterly inspired, and devious, or annoying as heck – I’d grant you all of that.

La Tène are, to me, a maximalist / minimalist band. Its members – Alexis Degrenier, Cyril Bondi, and Laurent Peter – often work in very experimental spaces, and La Tène are that, while also being noisy as fuck. Of course, Degrenier, Bondi, and Peter can make noise individually as well, but more often than not, you’ll find them doodling (my term) with quiet, and the spaces between notes, and maybe some makeshift versions of their preferred instruments. Again, none of that is off the table with La Tène, except the spaces are explored are between bouts of lumbering chaos; the strange instrument list is swallowed up by an orchestra of galumphing drums, piercing electronics, and rhythmic but off-kilter strings (via guitar, or, here, hurdy-gurdy); the “experimentation” is maybe more towards stretching a listener’s patience on occasion, to see how long seeming repetition can be maintained until your ears start to hear all of the intense nuance happening in the tiniest crevices of a song.

The minimalism is that you could call this drone: a few instruments, slowly – but urgently – going over similar musical lines again, and again, and again. But the maximalism is everything else: how that sparseness equates to an 11 in terms of intensity, ticking past that as we go over it once more; how the music inevitable makes you feel – whether that’s energized (me!) or maybe enraged.

On Abandonnée/Maléja, our trio picks up bagpipes, bass, and a 12-string guitar via their guests, perfectly mapping to the group’s sound and cadence – no showboating here – while adding another layer of synchronicity and overload. The Abandonnée side of the LP has a bid at being like a dirge stoner rock band: there are legit ebbs and flows where the group builds up to some kind of shift in tone, the impact of that only increased by how long we’re held in each trance-like portion of the song. The Maléja side plays more into longform drone, though La Maléja benefits greatly from its drunken-sailor swoon, very much reminding me of Polar Goldie Cats. Closer Danse De L’Ortha is maybe the weak spot here: besides a switchover to harsher percussion after a few minutes in, the track remains mostly the same. It’s still quite mesmeric, but there was clearly a topdown decision to try to hit the 20-minute mark with every track, and this sole tune is where that felt like a stretch. Otherwise, assuming you’re in the boat that isn’t annoyed by this kind of music, the other 60 minutes of tunes comparatively flies by – so you’ll take that additional 20 minutes, gladly.