Scarecrow by Trois-Quarts Taxi System / Eloi Petillon

Brussels-based Maloca Records welcomes Trois-Quarts Taxi System into the fold with the release of his new LP, Scarecrow, expanding his chimeric universe of acoustics and synthetics. In line with his previous outings, the Paris-based DJ, performer and sound artist continues to explore processes of abstraction and decay, though the results here feel starker, more abrasive, and more narratively grounded than before.

Drawing influence from dubstep, techno, dub, ambient, and electroacoustic practice, Scarecrow occupies the liminal space between club-focused and experimental approaches. The LP offers as much for the dancefloor as it does for meditative home listening; hyper-visual and deeply synaesthetic, the release unfolds within a clear storytelling framework. Each track behaves like a slowly mutating ecosystem, animated by particulate field recordings and decaying, latent synthetic whirrs.

Hollow Men I materialises from layers of desolate field recordings and ferremite-like screeches. Pristine high end and walls of bass fizz and contort across the stereo field as the sparse ambience gradually coheres into a rhythm of glitches and pulsing low end. The movement grows increasingly frenetic, eventually forming a near-solid mass of noise that never relinquishes its tension.

Coil provides the LP’s first dancefloor-focused moment. Gasps of debris-laden impacts call out before the arrangement folds into a compressed, airless chamber of containerised percussive pulses and lopsided decaying synth tones. Anchored by a broken-beat techno lattice, the track remains sub-heavy and resolutely minimal, with eroded bass forms slowly forcing their way to the surface.

On Rat’s Coat, aerosol-compressed bursts of air cut erratically through a hazy, particulate environment. A weathered voice echoes sparsely in the distance, grounding the narrative. Whiplash flickers of high-end particles intersect with dusty, head-nodding drums at lower tempos, producing a hypnotic, hypnagogic zone that feels both unstable and deeply immersive.

Rose amère I, the LP’s first fully ambient excursion, opens on a tangle of twisted synthetic signals, like auditory telecommunication cables bent and warped out of shape. Their calls drift across a wasteland of low-gravity drones that orbit slowly, counterbalanced by rips of field-recording static. Trois-Quarts Taxi System’s ability to fuse acoustic and electronic worlds is on full display here, as warped guitar signals stretch and fray into an increasingly caustic, saturated soundscape.

Unexpected pivots are a defining quality of the LP, and Stuffed makes this especially clear. The focus swings back toward the dancefloor - though with the restrained, minimal touch that permeates the record. Bouncing sub pulses ricochet around the environment, elongating and stretching as staccato, near-metallic vocal stutters hold the frame in place. The track surprisingly dissolves into a deep expanse of drunken synth lurches before resolving into a fluid sub pattern rinsed with particulate noise wash.

Crowskin stands as the album’s most abrasive entry. It opens abruptly in a hyper-distorted world of scorched kicks and clipped-out screeches pushed to the front of the mix. These elements gradually liquefy into a caustic, effervescent fluid. Out of nowhere, the space is shattered by hyper-aggressive percussive blasts that lock into a tense dialogue with deep pulse tones, evoking the mechanised thrashings of a creature assembled from rusted metal and automotive debris. The track’s brutalist intensity and fractured rhythmic language recall the electroacoustic techno extremities of Grischa Lichtenberger.

Spool arrives with a driving rhythm that feels simultaneously wet and arid. Synth tones drift in and out as though moving through air, water, sand, and sediment. Bass tears wrap around bending plastic textures before the track settles into a head-nod, dubstep-leaning groove, drawing clear parallels with tactile, pressure-driven UK club music.

Rose amère II deepens the album’s ambient thread, opening with regal, stuttered orchestral tones that push into the foreground before fracturing into sharper and sharper contours. Ryoji-Ikeda-esque sine bleeps and sparse noise-clicks impose a taut rigidity across the space, while a lonely, meandering guitar line calls out - fragility illuminating the track’s otherwise taut architecture.

Hollow Men II feels like witnessing a bellicose entity gradually coalescing in real time. Plastic, rubbery clicks puncture the dronescape as a sparse half-time dubstep pulse, driven by a swung sub, nudges the form forward as the organism comes online. High-frequency eruptions and sinuous hi-hats descend like acid rain, corroding the sonic perimeter as the piece collapses into noise.

Closing the LP, Straw & Bodies rises out of the shadows in an oppressive swell of reverb-drenched choral mass and metallic resonance. The density dissolves into a glitchy, ticking drum pattern - tides of choir and tone falling away to reveal something viscous, grainy, and tumultuous.

Producer, live performer, sound artist and DJ, he explores hybrid forms beyond genre boundaries. Working across club and non-club contexts, his practice blends electroacoustic approaches with hypnotic bass music. A resident on Rinse France, he co-founded De la… je l’espère and Hard Love Motor Love, and is one half of the duo Malesa, where bass music and trip-hop intertwine with Spanish poetry.