The Drift Institute

Over­flow­ing with var­i­ous musi­cal influ­ences (dark ambi­ent, drone, indus­tri­al music, dub) the musi­cal com­po­si­tion is a sub­tle mix of intox­i­cat­ing melodies, envelop­ing metal­lic tex­tures, and heady rhythms plung­ing the lis­ten­er into a state close to bewitch­ment. This music invites you to indulge in this haunt­ing trance that cul­mi­nates in a sen­so­ry cathar­sis in some of the album’s more explo­sive phases.

But the alche­my also comes from the fusion of the sens­es and the ​“sense”, because in addi­tion to the musi­cal intox­i­ca­tion, emerges from the album a com­mit­ted speech rest­ing on the texts writ­ten and shout­ed by the musi­cian NVST. Sim­i­lar to mantras, these lyrics unfold in an acid crit­i­cism of mod­ern soci­ety and denounce all its devi­a­tions: eco­nom­ic dom­i­na­tion, the deprav­i­ty of the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, police vio­lence, and mass sur­veil­lance — so many deviances and injus­tices that invite aware­ness and revolt. But in the Drift Insti­tute, the revolt is no longer only ide­o­log­i­cal, it becomes car­nal because it is not rea­son that makes rev­o­lu­tions, it is bodies.

To take this dis­course out of its lit­er­al dimen­sion and bring it towards a super­nat­ur­al and vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence, NVST and Théo Muller draw an atmos­phere with pow­er­ful and enig­mat­ic sym­bol­ic evo­ca­tions. Bor­row­ing from the codes of witch­craft and occult sci­ences, they deploy a strong­ly cin­e­mato­graph­ic uni­verse and pro­pose a nar­ra­tive path cen­tered around the fig­ure of the Drift Insti­tute. A mys­te­ri­ous secret soci­ety estab­lished in a cas­tle with a goth­ic aes­thet­ic, its mis­sion is to purge evil from the world and its lead­ers dur­ing dark shaman­ic cer­e­monies. A ter­ri­fy­ing process, but nec­es­sary for the advent of a more just world, free of its infamies.