Bank Myna celebrates its second album.
The adventure that begun in 2013 continues for Maud Harribey (vocals/violin/keyboards), Fabien Delmas (guitar/lap steel), Daniel Machón (bass/noise box/samples) and Constantin du Closel (drums/percussion), who announce the release of Eimuria in collaboration with Medication Time Records, Stellar Frequencies, Araki Records and Modulor.
The album opens with the heavy No Ocean Of Thoughts, by far the shortest composition, which lets Maud‘s voice meet a mysterious instrumental of keyboards and a few saturated notes in the background. As the sound progresses, it becomes stranger and stranger, but this is nothing compared to The Shadowed Body, which starts off very gradually, offering ever more oppression in its noisy rhythm until it becomes almost unbearable before exploding all at once, allowing the saturation to express itself fully for a while. The return to calm comes naturally, but we sense that the darkness hasn’t completely gone, and the band let it slowly regain ground, even offering a moment of extreme slowness that’s almost soothing before a moment of terror followed by The Other Faceless Me, which returns to true tranquility. Some heady sounds slowly appear to accompany the singer, becoming more and more insistent and contributing to this almost mystical atmosphere that weaves itself continuously and fairly regularly before cutting off abruptly to make way for Burn All The Edges where the sound is first hazy, then finally heavy. The vocalist sometimes leaves the instrumental to advance on its own, but the latter eventually changes to become more intriguing, marking the return of vocals and then finally of abrasive saturation, but in a way that is more hypnotic than aggressive, and which intensifies until its final moments to join L’Implorante, the last composition that begins in a rather minimalist fashion. The singer, guitar and effects dance alone, then welcome keyboards, a violin or a few noises that contribute to the creation of this canvas, before finally adopting other, more or less stifling motifs that can even take the form of aerial riffs or this impressive fog of sound before letting Maud guide us towards the end of the album.
Bank Myna is a unique project with a multi-faceted sound signature, making Eimuria an album with many assets to seduce. Slowness and oppression are on the agenda, but they’re far from alone, thanks to the musicians’ different influences.
80/100