Pangea De Futura – War Milk

Pangea De Futura’s debut offering is an epic record realized by eight musicians from some of the most important and hard-working Montreal bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, thisquietarmy, Exhaust, Hanged Up, Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche, Fly Pan Am, and more.

War Milk comprises four vast compositions that rely on slow build-ups and the gradual layering of organically intertwining musical elements and sonic textures. Everything is masterfully orchestrated but feels impulsive and free enough to remind you it’s the result of eight completely different approaches to music. The album was recorded in two main sessions with the drums, synths, and guitar tracked live. This results in the live feeling I mentioned but it gave the album its firm structure as well. War Milk has a grand sound, courtesy of Eric Quach (of thisquietarmy fame) who mixed the whole thing, and Aidan Girt (GY!BE) who then mastered it.

At first, you feel overwhelmed by all the elements that have been made to fit the album but the more time you spend with the album the more you realize everything is in its right place. Similar to Hynodrone Ensemble, another three-drummer band spearheaded by Eric Quach, Pangea De Futura’s rhythmic backbone is provided by three drummers Aidan Girt, Eric Craven, Samuel Bobony, all of which with its distinct style of drumming that somehow fit perfectly with the others. Curiously enough, the octet hasn’t featured a bass player and instead decided to let the drums swim into Quach’s endless guitar drones and Charles Bussières’ synth work. The rest of the already massive sound is in the hands of the brass section in which we find Véronique Janosy, Reüel Ordoñez, Neboysha Rakic (also on vocals).

On paper, War Milk sounds like an extremely difficult record to write, review, and get into, in reality, it just flows, twists, and finally embraces you in a pace and rhythm of its own. It’s a record as impressive as it’s straight-up hypnotic and captivating and I can honestly not recommend it enough, especially if you are a fan of the Montreal scene, and why the hell wouldn’t you be?