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
About Yura Yura
Yura Yura is the French solo project of Grégory Mousselle, based in Dijon. The project self-released a promotional album under its own name in 2011, followed by “Be Sexual” in 2013 and “Rumu Namba” on HANDS in 2016.
“Substance Noire”, catalog number HANDS D294, followed in December 2020 as Yura Yura’s third full-length album for the label, running just under 80 minutes across thirteen tracks.
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