Opening with a low industrial growl, the latest collaboration between French electronic artist Maxime Dangles and drummer & producer Tommy Rizzitelli is equal parts thrilling and threatening.
Entitled Bug, the song sits at the intersection of post punk and Krautrock, clattering drums propelling a dark grind of instrumentation. Bass fizzes as a guest vocal from Power of Dreams vocalist Craig Walker spits a disoriented stream of consciousness. As gloriously noisy as Bug is, there is a moment of peaceful beauty as the song drops into an ambient bridge, Walker’s vocals suddenly isolated and angelic, floating in the aether. All that noise returns with vengeance, however, acidic wonder and swirling synths consuming Walker, who seems to sing to us, clear-eyed with acceptance, as he disappears from view.
The overall performance is an emotive and cohesive piece, and Walker was clearly focused on building on what was already in the music, as he describes:
‘I’d had the line “I’m a bug in amber, stuck in perpetuity” sitting in my ideas folder for a while. When Tommy sent me the instrumental, it immediately clicked … It was important that the vocals didn’t hinder the free spirit of the track, but instead added tension and repetition.’
Bug comes ahead of Dangles & Rizzitelli’s forthcoming album, Sonars, and sets the tone for the release. The project was born out of the pair’s longstanding collaboration with BeBEST, a French-Québécois marine ecology laboratory. Having visited scientists in the field at Rimouski, a city in Québec, the duo were struck by the emotional weight carried by those trying to conduct such important and unique work, as Dangles describes:
‘One scientist had just returned from diving under Arctic ice. When his daughters asked him how it was, he was so overwhelmed he couldn’t say more than two words. That silence haunted us, and made us want to turn his emotion into music.’
The result is an album that reports to channel the sound of cracking sea ice and ‘the haunting quiet of remote landscapes’.
Check out Bug below, and look for Sonars when it is released via Amoor Records on 20 March 2026.