BIG|BRAVE, a trio made up of guitarist and singer Robin Wattie, guitarist Mathieu Ball and drummer Tasy Hudson, has recorded one of the most powerful bills to come out of Montreal in 2023. Nature morte is an album of extreme ambiences deep incantations hovered over by drones prone to the most violent guitar saturations and the heaviest pounding, but also of soothed melodies at the end of the eruption. The approach is based on robust, minimalist frameworks, very simple rhythmically and harmonically. The complexity lies in the textures, in the lava flows, in the fiery halos. Robin Wattie’s voice is inhabited not only by wild spirits, but also by subtle ones that flesh out its perception. The similarities with Chelsea Wolfe and Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota) are very tempting, but no, we won’t go any further, as there are so many areas of freedom to conquer in this trance-inducing territory.
