Les estampes is the latest album by Montreal-based guitarist, soundscape-maker, and label-head Thisquietarmy (Eric Quach). This is a collection of improvised sketches that were recorded in his jam space during the Covid-19 pandemic, and then rushed to release in anticipation for Quach’s 2024 Canadian summer tour.

Drone guitar is a thing, man.

If you’re into drone guitar, there’s almost no chance you’ve been living under a rock so world-proof that you haven’t already been in earshot of music by Thisquietarmy. He’s one of the most prolific musicians and proprietors of work in this genre, so I’m going to assume you’re mostly familiar with his sound if not some of his actual releases. If not, well then welcome to the dungeon my friend, welcome to the dungeon.

Please don’t bother taking off your boots on the way in, there are literally spikes sticking out of the floor everywhere. And remember the golden rule of cauldrons: If it’s bubbling, get chugging, if it’s still, just chill and spill.

But let’s not start off on the wrong foot here, Quach’s music isn’t just droning guitar strings, nor is it all doom and gloom, he’s a master sound designer, and Les estampes brings a vivid world of color into the orbit of a pretty dark genre. The fact that these pieces originated in jam form, during the pandemic, gives this collection a raw, exposed feeling and allows for some gnarly electronic and textural inventiveness.

And it’s most handy for those seeking to better understand his process.

It’s all about the process here. Without the “timelessness tool” of multi-track editing, we’re able to peer into and deeply engage with the stylistic layering of every element brick-by-brick and get an unfiltered view of how Quach builds these monolithic walls of tonal sound. It happens in real time, and it’s so dang performative.

I have seen him perform, so I can picture his classic rotation of stances: standing head down shoegazing, crouching to adjust pedals, standing again and swaying to play something more rhythmic and strummy. It’s as meditative to watch as it is to listen to. Take a listen:

Quach has his signal going through so many pedals and chains that it’s nearly impossible to trace the contours of the original sound unless he lets you hear the naked guitar strings momentarily. On Les estampes, this joy is not entirely unhad, yet it remains rare.

In “Corne de brume,” we are treated to the psychedelic, head-banging rhythmic strumming of a massively distorted axe, and it’s that element which pummels ahead of the drones and loops as the song crests over snow-capped crags. There’s absolutely no pulling away from this until the song meets its end. The helicopter’s gotta go up and over before it descends, the horsemen’s ears are bleeding as hooves clap the ground with gargantuan force, the monsoon rains drop down onto thatched roofs as if every cloud on Earth combined and exploded just above your head.

That is density. And so is this.

If you are bothered by clipping distortion, please turn away now, these gates are for other travellers. Quach could care less it seems. His amps are full blast and he’s crunching tones by the tens into his loops. (Don’t say the “these go to 11” line, please.) But the bigness isn’t really an obstacle here either, this music is respectably listenable and I urge you to spin this from start to finish if you have the time.

There’s of course, an imagistic perspective on this record; as always. Anyone listening to music this open-ended and this massive will have their own visions coming to mind, derived from the sound worlds he creates. It’s part of the bliss of seeing a performance like this unfold on stage, but spinning a drone metal record will give you visions too.

Here’s mine.

It’s 4am, March 21st, 1951 in Elkhart, Indiana. The fog rolls in before the sun comes up and the factory on the knife edge of town drones into the night like the sound of compressed air through concrete-contained space. Nobody’s there sept for the night foreman, half-asleep at his post, dreaming of horses, keeping one eye tuned to the flickering light at the top of the stack. The fog covers nearly everything else, so mostly he relies on sound to detect whether anyone’s broken through the fence, mischievous youths, homeless veterans looking for a warm place to sleep, stray dogs displaced by the mass movements of families to make way for the new hydraulic dam they’re building across the St. Joseph River. It should be quiet, and it should be still, but the drone of the plant blankets the ears and soothes the working man’s soul. The foreman, this foreman, has learned to hear through the drone and pick out characters that don’t belong. But at 4am on March 21st, his ear lets him down. He hears things he can’t place, or put an image to, things that might not necessarily belong to this world, let alone have their origins in Elkhart. He hears sounds that sound more like light, and calls of animals that feel rather more like beasts. He hears a choreography of phantoms, not horizontally but vertically. He reaches for his flashlight, turns the dial on the radio, but the flashlight is too timid to shine and the radio has gone plum silent. He picks up the phone but the line is down, the receiver beeps and shutters in cycles of hiss. The fog has thickened so much now that he can barely see his own hands inside his heated post. The factory drone has amplified now, as if its machines have been turned back on and are running at full steam. The immensity of the moment causes the Elkhart foreman to wonder if he’s awake or still even standing on solid ground at all, perhaps he’s lifted into the sky or perhaps descended down into the depths. The flickering light at the top of the tower still shines, though its visibility is dim and its distance is distorted. By 5am, the light of the sun will carry away all this heaviness, flowers will bend toward the horizon, the cows will rise and mull about, the condensation in the ground will evaporate, the traffic lights in the center of town will start up again and the irrigation sprinklers will putter to life.

By 5am, the factory will still be standing, but the Elkhart foreman will be never seen nor heard from again.

Please check out Thisquietarmy’s release and the rest of the Coup Sur Coup Records catalog via the link below.

Listen and purchase here, please.