Humbros - From 0 to 90 (2020)

French experimental duo Humbros announce their debut album From 0 To 90. Formed from percussion and electronics, Humbros’ fried, fourth world-inspired, instrumental minimalism opens gateways to hazy, esoteric mythologies.

Having formed over ten years ago, as teenagers, Nantes duo Simon Puiroux (electronics and sax) and Charles Dubois (percussion) construct the music of Humbros on a semi-improvised framework. Rhythmic patterns, samples and melodic phrases act as marker points along each piece’s winding, free-flowing narrative, a musical communication honed over their years of collaboration to reach From 0 to 90’s clairvoyant levels of improvisational understanding.

The record’s wealth of exploratory sonics stems from Humbros’ unique combination of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. Puiroux and Dubois line up recogniseable toms, congas, bells, and exotic wind instruments alongside a cryptic treasury of more curious artefacts: sound-distorting mirrors, wood, skins, metals, voice processors, and percussive stringed instruments. Combined with Puiroux’s modular synthesis and treated saxophone, this journey from heady, pulsating polyrhythms to sparse, chirruping insects of tropical concréte digs deep into hypnotic, meditative textures (they are never “jams”) whilst maintaining a deeply philosophical, conceptual relationship with the energies generated.

Constantly positioned in an intersection, in balance between acoustic and electronic sound, Humbros acts as an exploration of the “in-between”, produced by the marriage of two distinct timbral approaches. They sit between repetitive minimalism and illuminative free-jazz; between angular patterns and lysergic, dripping textures; human fragility and sci-fi sound-design.