Murmuüre - Murmuüre (2010)^{Release ID: 2762}

Music can be such a personal & introspective thing at times &, as a result, can often draw very different reactions & emotions from not only different people but also the individual depending on what they're looking to achieve, what their expectations are, what their level of experience is & how they're feeling on the day. But rarely will you find greater extremes than my two visits to French atmospheric black metal solo act Murmuüre's sole self-titled release from 2010. When I first reviewed "Murmuüre" back at the time of release I was still fresh from my return to metal after a decade in the electronic wilderness & was keen to indulge in all of the sounds that I'd missed so much during the many years since my departure. That comprised mostly of heavily riff-based & quite brutal extreme metal with releases that took a more textured approach being something relatively new to me as this sort of stuff simply hadn't been around back in the 80's & 90's. As a result, I often found myself skimming over releases like "Murmuüre" & deciding that it was utter crap when the reality was that I wasn't really prepared to give myself the chance to see if it COULD be for me. It simply didn't fit inside the self-imposed box I'd created around my own ideals for what extreme metal should be. The outcome was a pitiful 1/5 rating & a horribly sarcastic single paragraph review that I'm now very much ashamed of. Well, fast-forward eleven years down the track & things have changed significantly in my world as I'm now prepared to give every release the time & respect it deserves before making my judgement & thank goodness I am because this release is nothing short of incredible.

Let's start from the beginning... if you go into "Murmuüre" expecting black metal in the traditional sense then you'll be sorely disappointed. It certainly contains traces of black metal but they're broken down & presented in more of a layered & textured way. To be clear, it's really a post-black metal record with traces of ambient & the genuinely avant-garde so it's nowhere near as likely to open up to you on first listen as the latest Immortal record. You really do need to spend some time resetting your expectations & coming to grips with the obscure, occult-driven sounds that this release is championing. Only once you've accepted that this is a very different release that doesn't conform to your pre-defined notions of what black metal should be will you put yourself into the head space to understand its true beauty. It also helps a lot if you're accustomed to the noisier side of ambient music because "Murmuüre" definitely draws as much influence from that niche subgenre as it does from metal. The electronic component is probably a little overstated in all honesty as this doesn't sound like something you'd usually refer to as "electronic" even if it does utilize similar tools & techniques. Nor does it have anything whatsoever to do with industrial music. It's far too organic for that & is therefore much more closely associated with sheer ambience with even the black metal screams residing deep in the background & being used more as an accompaniment than a focal point.

Another reason I found "Murmuüre" a little hard to get into on first listen is that the opening track "Primo vere" is arguably the weakest of the six on offer. It's not a bad track as such & I still quite like it but it's not as transcendent or ethereal as the stronger material that comes later on, particularly the last couple of tracks which are truly remarkable. There are two genuine ambient pieces included in "Torch Bearer" & "Disincarnate" which also happen to be the shortest & both are spectacular in their achievement of pure & entirely foreign soundscapes that wrap themselves around the listener before transporting them to unusual destinations that leave them simultaneously blissful & disoriented. The metal tracks on the other hand don't necessarily take the form of metal for their entire duration. They often spend half the track building up to the entrance of the tinny, noisy guitars with their ultimate entry signaling a transition into something entirely different to what you thought the track was originally intended to be. Dissonance is used quite regularly with some of the melodic content seemingly being intentionally twisted in discordant ways to further enhance the occult atmosphere, a methodology that I find to be a resounding success.

Ultimately, "Murmuüre" has embarrassed me in many ways. I'm disappointed that I was so short-sighted back in 2010 & hope that not too many people read my previous review which clearly showcased my ignorance & impatience as much as anything else. Releases like this one that try for something so different & unique should be embraced & given additional time to break loose of our own internal biases. The fact is though that if I wasn't so committed to my "minimum three listens" philosophy these days then this release may once again have slipped into the abyss of albums that haven't obviously ticked all of my musical boxes. Thank goodness it hasn't because it's a genuinely unique & enriching experience that I see myself returning to again & again in the future.

For fans of Menace Ruine, Mamaleek & Xothist.

There are some release that mange to muster such a nonsensical amount of praise and adoration that I often wonder if parallel universes have already been discovered and are being used so regularly that people have routine commutes to them.  Now, before I start to sound all elitist I should reiterate that I still very much abide by the ethos of each to their own.  If you can find enough positives in this release to warrant it being worthy of your praise then that’s fine and you are clearly a better person than I am, dear reader.

I will stand by this opening statement with every last breath in my body though.  The first two minutes of the opening track of this release are the fucking worst two minutes of “music” I have ever had the misfortune to hear in my life.  Genuinely, it sounds to me like a drunk saxophone player has gatecrashed the recording and is fighting with the sound engineer in the middle of the studio.  After this initial fucking terrible onslaught of mindless comedy, the rest of the release feels almost normal.  Normal does not always mean good though and the fact that such a basic structure or form being exhibited is so welcoming a prospect really speaks volumes for the quality of that opening two minutes.

I heard this album described as 30 minutes of progressive-noise, which is not true (out of fairness to both the progressive and noise music genres if nothing else).  The fact is that this artist created a jam session of industrial, eclectic and minimalist music values, touching lightly on black metal here and there.  This occasional bm when coupled with a very bm looking piece of artwork somehow got classified in black metal despite the record clearly being a multi-style experiment that has some black metal in it, not a black metal release that has some multitude of musical style applied to it to make it look clever.

There are reviews/write-ups of this release that talk about it like some holy grail of black metal and or noise and it really is lost on me why.  There’s far too much of an attempt at structure here to justify it being anywhere near noise classification.  It is an interesting take on musical structure and form but it in no way exemplifies any qualities that can justify its cult classic status.

Murmuüre is an artist I had a sum total of zero knowledge about coming into this, although it seems there is very little to know as this half an hour seems to be the complete recorded output of sole member F (b. Felix Naos). Unfortunately, I've got a really low tolerance for avant-garde or particularly experimental music so this is not at all my sort of thing. A lot of it sounds like tape loops or some sort of electronic jiggerypokery going on instead of "real" black metal and it started to jar on my nerves very quickly - part way through Reincarnate I was beginning to struggle.  A large part of the album also uses the same technique with ambient pieces which are marginally more successful than the overtly black metal sections, although that isn't saying much.

I guess this was a case of trying to bring something new to black metal, utilising DJing techniques in a metal environment, and it's metallic collage effect certainly is different. Is that a justification for it's existence? Yes, I would have to say it probably is. Did I get much out of it? Resoundingly no, I did not. I'm sorry, I don't know what more to say, but while I admire the ambition, the result is piss poor as far as I'm concerned. Then again, if black metal is supposed to piss people off and get under their skin, to that end it succeeded with me.