Yura Yura – Substance Noire (Album – Hands)

Genre/Influences: Industrial, Industrial-Trance, Rhythmic-Noise, IDM.

Format: Digital, CD.

Background/Info: French solo-project Yura Yura is driven by Grégory Mousselle. Grégory doesn’t release albums on a regular basis and this third opus comes four years after the excellent “Rumu Namba”. The title is inspired by ‘substantia nigra’, a ganglia structure in the midbrain that is essential to both movement and reward.

Content: The new work sounds in the prolongation of “Rumu Namba”, which already revealed an impressive evolution in the production process. Yura Yura is still animated by a solid Rhythmic-Noise basis, but the tracks are accomplished with more –and complementary, influences such as Trance-structures, sophisticated IDM passages and even an Ambient touch. The album is diversified, moving from ‘classical’ heavy Rhythmic-Noise pieces towards more Electronic cuts. I even noticed some Klinik-al sequences running through “Flesh”. You’ll also notice spoken samplings and I even presume there are a few, rare, real, but manipulated vocals on the aforementioned track.

+ + + : Yura Yura moves on unleashing rough and brutal Industrial music mixed with intelligent Electronics. I especially like the songs with Trance passages (cf. “Shadow”, “Voodoo”), but I’ve been also surprised by the elaborated and more IDM-driven “Flesh”. This song sounds like revealing a hidden side of the musician. In a purer Rhythmic-Noise approach “Brume”, “Undead” and “Kalor” will ravish the die-hard of the genre. Somewhere in between there’s “Hypnasch”, which is a solid opener with a Trance apotheosis.

– – – : The album is for sure the most diversified Yura Yura work to date, which maybe explains it sometimes feels a bit like a mishmash of influences, but I’ve to admit it’s a great mishmash…

Conclusion: Yura Yura has accomplished a new, impressive work mixing different, related influences, but also mixing retro- and contemporary ideas. This is a great piece of music. 

Best songs: “Flesh”,“Shadow”, “Voodoo”, “Hypnash”, “Lakrimal”, “Contakt”.

Rate: (8½).

Artist: www.facebook.com/yuraruy

Label: www.handsproductions.com / www.facebook.com/hands.official