Cruel Nature Records – 14th January 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
Released on various formats by various labels in different countries, the latest offering from genre-blasting French instrumental trio Toru is being released on cassette (and download) by Northumberland’s Cruel Nature in an edition of 65. Following on from 2020’s eponymous debut and a split release with Teufelskeller, which saw Toru join forces with CR3C3LL3, this time around, they’re different again, and having been featured as album of the day at Bandcamp Central just the other day, the signs are that Velours Dévorant could see them significantly expand their fanbase – and deservedly so.
Velours Dévorant featires five V-themed tracks defined by some riotous riffmongering and big, dirty, overdriven guitar noise with tempo shifts galore. Blasting in with ‘VHS’, it’s a manic ride through waves of tempestuous, bludgeoning racket from the very start. Trilling feedback fulfils the duty of a lead guitar line, while a shuddering, ribcage-rattling bass tears its way out from the chaos atop some heavy, but highly skilled jazz-inspired drumming.
Some will likely describe their sonic blitzkrieg as ‘experimental’, but that’s something of a misrepresentation, in that it suggests a lack of coherence, a haphazard and unplanned approach. The sudden stops and starts, the moments where a chord hangs, suspended in the air for just the briefest moment before the fractionally-delayed snare smash or cymbal crash, where the three of them simultaneously draw breath in just a split second… those microcosmic moments require remarkable precision – unquestionably, intuition is key, but rehearsal too. The skill is to make it sound haphazard, unpredictable, to keep the listener on the edge of their seat, buttocks clenched, while having it all worked out. Every composition contains moments which feel like the sonic equivalent of watching trapeze artists, where you tense and momentarily stop breathing as they fly through the air, seemingly in slow-motion, tense in case they fail to grab on: will they keep it together, or will everything collapse into a mess of sludge like a sewer rupturing and spewing a fountain of slurry?
These are long tracks – the shortest is over five and a half minutes – with infinite twists and turns. The skewed, surging jazz-grunge of ‘Voiles’ – a whopping eleven and a half minutes in duration – is representative, and encapsulates the essence of the album. The guitars squall and screed in a showcase of noise-rock par excellence, while the bass lurches and snarls, grooves and grinds, and the percussion is simply wild. It’s like listening an instrumental version of every track by the Jesus Lizard all at once. There’s a low-impact, atmospheric mid-section that rolls and rumbles, yawns and splashes… lazily would e the wrong word, but it takes its time, with bent guitar chords twanging like elastic bands, while the sparse percussion meanders seemingly without aim. But then it all reshapes and takes form once more, building, building, and then exploding so hard as to detonate so hard as to blow your eyeballs out of their sockets. Fuck, when these guys hit the pedals, they really do go all out.
I’ve heard a plethora of zany noise-rock acts, and have loved many – most of whom are so obscure that to reference them or draw comparisons would be the most pointless exercise imaginable: ‘hey, wow, this band I’ve not heard of sound like a bunch of other bands I’ve never heard of, that’s informative!’.
On Velours Dévorant, Toru take the tropes of post-rock, with its protracted delicate segments and slow-building atmosphere, and incorporate them within a noise-rock setting, with the result being epic tunes with some incredibly graceful, and ultimately poignant expanses, pressed tight against some of the most explosive overloading, overdriven abrasion going. And then, of course, there are the jazz elements: ‘Volutes’ is the apex of jazz/grunge hybridization, and it works so well. Not sold on Nirvana meets The Necks? Trust me.
The fourteen-minute title track is… special. It is, in many respects, the evolution of post-rock circa 2004. Chiming guitars, infinite space, haunting atmosphere. The intro is magnificent, beautiful. Her Name is Calla’s sprawling ‘Condor and River’ comes to mind. That use of space, that simmering tension, that sense of something growing which is more than… well, it’ s simply more. There are things hidden. When the riffing lets rip, holy shit, does the riffing let rip, fully shredding blasts of distortion tear through with obliterating force. The track feels like an album in its own right.
It seems like a while since I’ve felt compelled to describe an album as ‘epic’ – but this… this is next-level epic.
AA
Aural Aggravation 