Memoires paramoleculaires

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The latest release by Vromb (AKA Hugo Girard) plays like the soundtrack to an experiment gone wrong. Presented as a sci-fi drama about perception and reality, of hallucinatory audio experiments and the presence of invisible interdimensional beings, the sounds on 'Mémoires paramoléculaires' are like those found in a clandestine laboratory. A humming oscilloscope shivers next to a row of beakers boiling over with some viscous fluid. Electricity courses through the entire room, emitting sparks from various banks of computers, instrument panels and generators. Footsteps echo loudly off the cold floors and concrete walls, and the entire scene is bathed in a sickly blue light from overhead florescent lights.

Fans of Vromb's previous work, particularly of earlier releases, won't be taken aback by this apprehensive and grim vision. They'll be prepared for the blend of forbidding and deeply hollow beats and high-voltage drones rippling through 'Mémoires paramoléculaires' like a power surge through an electric grid.

Vromb is at his best when he's at his loudest, and tracks like 'Assemblage - B', 'Facteur humain (ligne courbe)' and 'L'appareillage ultratonique' show off Girard's talents in a brilliant, albeit harsh, light. They start off with a slightly static hum, only to grow in ferocity and volume with a different barrage of elastic beats, sounding like the microscopic movements of a host cell forced into the role of 24-hr. virus factory. Each track concludes with the death of the organism - the beats diminishing into a spectral wind.

While most of the other tracks on the disc aren't as violent, they are still as foreboding. For example, 'Calibrage' and 'Conclusion vers le silence' channel bodiless, robotic voices over a choppy sea of ambient static and r adio noise, while 'Vue - éclipse' is like a distress signal growing in intensity as the emergency becomes more desperate until the signal fades away, unanswered.

'Mémoires paramoléculaires' is packaged in a custom cardboard envelope with inserts detailing bits and pieces of the philosophy and characters making up the background story. But while most of the information and snippets of dialogue languish in the dry and theoretical, they serve as a decoy to allow the faceless, ravenous void to ooze out of the tracks and envelope the uninitiated and unprepared. To Vromb, it seems like his listeners, and maybe all of humanity, are sitting ducks.