review: Vromb "Noize Mélodia"

Montréal’s Vromb has returned with a new selection of sonic challenges for us to sort throught, and once again, his manifested machinations almost command a most serious attention from the listener. Noize Mélodia, released by Ant-Zen, continues the one-man project’s complex and intriguing audio explorations, this time around somewhat departing from what some of us can only describe as his “trademark” sound developed over the last few albums, although one would be a fool to proclaim that Vromb’s sound in any era was anything but self-repetitive and reliant on past techniques. In fact, Noize Mélodia is indeed unmistakingly Vromb, as each track builds on itself, morphs and evolves into unchartered and yet self-exploratative areas, not unlike allowing the song’s own “vibration” or “tone” to shape it’s own self, with only slight nudges from the human operator behind the unique and un-imitable sounds. Strangely hypnotic while constantly keeping us on our toes, each individual song also works as part of the whole, and one could easily just enjoy the whole album as a single entity which never stagnates nor lingers on any surface or territory for too long. Complex yet simple without ever becoming too minimal, textures rich in density but fluid in motion, Vromb’s alien and yet vaguely familiar audio excursions feel more like a fevered dream or hallucinatory state of consciousness rather than a nightmarish trip through strange lands (one possible exception could be the track “tempête solaire suivie de: écho d’une terre sans hommes”, which starts off more abrasive than one would expect from a more recent Vromb release, but does subside into a moderately less off-putting state). If anything, this time around the work seems as though it is always at the cusp of losing control, but Vromb seems perfectly at ease to fend off the possible chaos and remain in total control of the self-evolving audioscapes. Like much of all of Vromb’s oeuvre, it is best to enter without any preconceived expectations and allow the sounds to take the helm of the piloting while the listener should be both attentive of the happenings but remain an appreciative passenger.  

I have known Vromb's mastermind ever since the mid-90s when I discovered his debut album, and have remained a dedicated fan ever since (with only a slight absence during a part of the 2000s where I was virtually absent from pretty much everyone and everything). He had warned me that his latest album was anything but an easy listening experience and that I should indeed be warned before going in, expecting something more akin to his last record "Chorégraphie" or some of his more recent offerings. Yet with this in mind, I did not find "Noize Mélodia" as much of an anomaly as I would have expected after Hugo's warnings. In fact I was pleasantly surprised for the most part, and find this album another fantastic entry in the Vromb catalogue.