More 'faerical blasting punk' from the woodlands of France! Here's another somewhat rare 7" find that I dug up when I went hunting for everything that the cult French band Nuit Noire still had in print, a 2005 Ep that features five songs of their cavernous low-fi punk. I've been getting really obsessed with this band's music lately, as it has that primitive, death rock influenced sound that I've turned into a total junkie for, but mixes it in with some aggressive black metal elements and delivers it in a naive, childlike manner (with lots of references to forests and nighttime and waking dreams) that sounds like nothing else. Imagine a cross between Rudimentary Peni, Christian Death and some of that sloppy Les Legions Noires style black metal and you'll have an idea of what Nuit Noire sounds like.

On this 2006 7", Nuit Noire teams up with the equally wistful sounding gloom pop of fellow French band Call Me Loretta. The two Nuit Noire songs that kick off the 7" are fuckin' great; both "In The Very Very Old Forest" and "Moonbath" have that unique NN sound where sloppy, frantic punk rock is combined with equally sloppy blastbeats and some supremely haunting reverb-soaked guitar riffs, with the first song in particular having that peculiar mix of early 80s anarcho punk abandon and low-fi black metal alienation. The faster hardcore parts that pop up are wonderfully messy and violent, while the blackened melodies swarm like a more drug-addled take on classic Scandinavian black metal. The second of Nuit Noire's delirious nighttime fantasies sounds more like a damaged death-punk jam, with the singer's fey wailing vocals reminding me of Rozz Williams quite a bit, paired up with a super catchy/poppy hook.

On the other side you get two songs from the Toulouse indie band Call Me Loretta, "Each Dawn I Die" and "Smart Heart", both delivered in a slightly off-key manner with gloomy plaintive verses with almost spoken lyrics contrasted with the slightly more intense choruses, a kind of maudlin jangly indie rock that sorta reminds me of both Slint and Pavement.

Limited to five hundred copies. Note that the entire pressing of this 7" has a printer error that jumbled the center labels for the two sides, but there's a note enclosed in the record that reminds you about this.