Le Futur Ça Marche Pas

One of the most rewarding things while listening to Cyril Cyril’s third album is not being able to anticipate what is going to happen next. It’s like the whole world was thrown into a blender and this myriad sound came out of it. Le Futur Ça Marche Pas (The Future Doesn’t Work) is a sort of psychedelic bundle that feeds on funk basslines, a steady motorik beat, a banjo turned into desert blues guitar, a singing voice that resists singing (triggering memories of 80s French rock acts, hip-hop, Brigitte Fontaine or Laurie Anderson, take your pick); each new song is a surprise. There is such an explosion of creativity in Swiss Cyril Cyril’s music that French psychobilly-surf-rock-Mexican sounding act La Femme seem like a good pairing.

There was already a lot to be excited about in Cyril Yeterian and Cyril Bondi’s previous albums, but Le Futur Ça Marche Pas is clearly a major step forward, summoning Meridian Brothers’ Eblis Álvarez for the tense, kaleidoscopic and brilliant ‘Microonda Sahara’, Inès Mouzoune for the Arabic trance in ‘La Rotation de l’Axe’ (Al-Qasar come to mind) and Violeta Garcia for the hypnotic noise and electronic title-track. And then there’s the spectacular post-punk and jazzy eruption of ‘Les Phoenix de l’Amour’ and ‘Plus Rien à Faire’, as indebted to hip-hop as to industrial rock and Gnawa.

Forget about predictability. With Cyril Cyril anything can happen. Let us raise a glass to that.