MONOLITHE NOIR La Foi Gelée

Description

At the forefront of a music stripped of the usual instrument/machine divide and stylistic factions, Monolithe Noir continues his creative pursuit with a fourth album, ideally positioned between melodic obsessions, unrestrained sonic experimentation, and intimate storytelling.

In recent years, Antoine Messager Pasqualini created a striking audio documentary, Rebecca, devoted to the free and marginal trajectory of a British woman found dead in a village in Brittany where she had rebuilt her life. Writing this project deeply shook the musician and absorbed part of the creative process of this fourth album, begun in the summer of 2023. By leaving Brussels for Brest, near where he was born, and by becoming a father,Messager Pasqualini rediscovered the meaning and love needed to make a record. Returning to a solo format after Rin, his previous trio-based album, Monolithe Noir manages to draw nourishment from his fieldwork on Rebecca, which resonates with his upcoming album. Ideas and sound elements collide, generating two works that are nevertheless completely distinct in form.

This fourth Monolithe Noir album is his most sung, his most direct—and although it repeatedly addresses grief, it is also his brightest. From the frantic race across the city in search of a lost animal friend (Long bridge) to the slow nocturnal rummaging through the alleys of a steep neighborhood (Down in) to the mystical explosion (La foi gelée) that slowly decants into a murky, half-soothing, half-unnerving bath, La foi gelée unfolds as a succession of emotional and physical mountain ranges, punctuated by 'gates' inviting the listener to another step—without revealing whether it is the next or the previous one. Without abandoning synthesizers, Monolithe Noir's instrumentarium discreetly shifts toward saturated guitars and bowed strings, the bass asserts itself as the ruling instrument, and the voice slips in (Virgox) or stands fully upfront (Seek you, La foi gelée). Flutter, the central piece of the album, condenses the themes explored across the record, gathers a whole clique of musicians (Clara Levy, Raphaële Germser, Isabelle Sainte-Rose, Christophe Claeys, Billy Fuller, Aurélien Auchain, Yannick Dupont), and pays tribute to those who swim toward the open sea without looking back and without worrying whether they can still keep their footing. If this fourth album was constructed this way, it's so itscraftsman could lose himself in it.

Titles

01. Long bridge
02. Virgox
03. Down in
04. Gate one
05. Seek you
06. Running fast
07. Threat on me
08. Flutter
09. Gate two
10. La foi gelée (feat. Fabiola)

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