France

ADAO

4 Oct

00h30

A power trio brought together by Yann Gourdon on hurdy gurdy, Jérémie Sauvage on bass and, for this show, Romain Simon on drums, France take drone and minimalism at their most ecstatic and massive, taking away the guitar out of the equation as the foundation of rock to let Gourdon’s hurdy gurdy, an instrument given to hypnosis and repetition by itself, roam freely and fierily along this pulse. With lysergic ancestors in the stomp of Velvet Underground’s ‘Sister Ray’, Neu’s motorik beat, Spacemen 3’s narcotic rock or the minimalism of the Dream Syndicate, France knit long digressions around repetitive rhythms and bass lines unto which Gourdon deploys his arsenal of quasi-riffs, gushing distortion and feedback in a whole that is, while apparently monolithic, constantly moving. There is no beginning or end. Only glimpses of eternity.