So far I assumed that Ambiances Magnetiques was mainly a label devoted to a wide variety of improvised music, in all its guises. Perhaps Political Ritual is also along the lines of that, but it sounds surely quite a bit different. It is a duo of Felix Antoine Morin and Maxime Corbeil-Perron and they use ‘analogue modular and digital synthesis and incorporate invented wind instruments, traditional Balinese percussion, field recordings and digital signal processing’, which still sounds quite different than what is pressed on this LP. It is, quite frankly, a pretty noisy beast, this record. It is very rich with electronic sound, pushing sonic boundaries, with minimalist beats, and yet also it is not without harmony, such as the processed accordion on ‘Ceremonie’. It eventually gets all a bit distorted here and the needle almost jumps off because of all the frequencies cut in these grooves, but it goes well. The dynamic range of the music is enormous, I would think. From deep end bass to high pitched frequencies, but I’d like to emphasize that, even under the heavy weight of some of this, this is not a record about (improvised) noise. Political Ritual therefore has too many other interests and tricks up their sleeves; be it drone, massive ambient or the Pan Sonic inspired single bass beat, it all has a place in this music. No matter what it is, Political Ritual plays it with sheer intensity and delivers a most powerful record. I must admit that invented wind instruments and/or Balinese percussion seemed to instruments that I didn’t recognize in this music, and all seemed to find their origins in electronics, be it analogue or digital. I am not sure what and if ‘political’ and/or ‘ritual’ mean in this context but if it has to do with creating something forceful they surely managed to do so very well. This is not music you stick on for pure pleasure, but also to arrive at some agitated state. I am sure if a riot needed a soundtrack this duo could play one.