FULMINES REGULARIS

Musique Noise is one of the umpthienth try from a french group to capitalize on Magma's fame. It was an odd time to release such a record as in 88 such music was terribly uncool!!!

Although , the music is well recorded and executed, it has a bit of originality because of the clear and well spoken french lyrics (superb voice of Isabelle Bruton), but this is about it on the originality front. The music quickly goes down the beaten paths of your average Zheul music all laid out well before by not only Magma, but also all of its offshoots (Zao, Weidorge) but also Eskaton.

This album is only for real afficianados of Zheul or can also be considered as a good intro to that particular style because it is fairly accessible for the unitiated.

Part of a slightly new brand of Zeuhl focusing on the lighter and jazzier style, importantly incorporating the scatty operatic vocal style. Similar in style to Eskaton too who I would slightly controversially put ahead of Magma in terms of creating albums I'd listen to on repeat. That's on show in the first couple of tracks - one fast and light, the other slower and calmer, both full of jazz tropes and zeuhl vocalisations. Not such a fan of the very 80s synth work at the back end of track 2 though. That leads into a short track sung in French, with lots of electronic distortions which is a bit... meh. And it gets worse with some B-Horror cackling to start track 4. This is a really stop-start track which fails to flow at all through some attempts to sound a bit spooky. They were better off keeping it light like the first track. The next one L'étroit huit does a better job, and they really should have made more use of the saxophone that's on show at times here, rather than the synths. Ends well though.

Of the four additional tracks on the CD (and via streaming) Vision Intempestive is pretty funky with a great deep bass line, but that's all I'd listen to again. Ecco is pretty jarring and the vocals aren't great. Ragnarok descends into a chaos of percussion after a few minutes before some more 80s electronic synth. Villiers is too much like a sitcom soundtrack at times and then again gets too synthy.

It then ends with the very strange Pzkr! with massively sped up sections and oddly distorted vocals.

Massive frustration this album - the first track promisted a lot, but it just keeps on going downhill in my view.