Julien Ash and M.Nomized Assemble Dissonant Architectures on ‘Rotostyles’

The French label Lotophagus has spent years mapping the outer reaches of post-industrial, chamber, and electronic composition. Its latest release pairs two artists already embedded in that territory: Michel Madrange, under the M.Nomized alias, and Julien Ash. Their collaborative album, Rotostyles, works through a sequence of heavy drone mutations and disorienting textural shifts that feel deliberately sculpted, not improvised.

Madrange’s track record includes unyielding post-industrial recordings for Cold Spring, and his signature here tilts toward the kind of alchemical, patient sound design shared with Nurse With Wound. Ash’s recent work on the label has leaned into similarly demanding exchanges, as heard in his duo with Philippe Neau. On Rotostyles, the two voices don’t so much merge as coexist uneasily, pulling the listener through a series of monochromatic openings that swell into grander, atonal collisions.

The opener sets a lysergic drone in motion, allowing it to fracture over time into microtonal details and sudden dynamic turns. Tracks like “Stories of Hapoti” push deeper into orchestral abstraction, evoking the dense dramatic weight of Penderecki or the electronic cyclones of Roland Kayn without lapsing into mimicry. There’s a constant pressure between restraint and ruin, a tension the album refuses to resolve. It’s uneasy and strange, and it does not reach for the listener—it waits.