ALBUM REVIEW: Petite Noir – MotherFather

Roya

Released: 14.04.23

Seven years on from its audacious predecessor, Petite Noir’s long-awaited sophomore LP finds the pride of the Congo (Yannick Ilunga to his mum) doubling down on his considerable strengths with surefooted slices of genre-evading gloriousness. Restlessly eclectic yet strikingly cohesive, MotherFather is steeped in a lofty yet intuitively grounded duality and sees Ilunga’s noirwave movement deftly reinvigorated, evincing an artistic evolution with both its consummate production and multifarious bevy of influences.

Throughout, Ilunga’s atmospheric touch and subtly nebulous flourishes temper the record’s preponderance of bombastic polyrhythms and surging melodies with lush moments of pellucid transcendence. Ferociously screamtastic album opener 777 revels in pure, uncut punk brio – elsewhere, swooning strings garnish Concrete Jungle’s friend-or-foe dirge with earnest pathos. An unassailable triumph!