This experimental one-man project from Quimper, France, is shrouded in the same gloomy intrigue as the nocturnal urban landscape that comprises the album cover. Despondent electronica, panicky and aggressive voice samples, and depressive black metal ambiance blend together like a haze of city smog settling on deserted streets. Mélancolie Urbaine is a relentlessly curious record, in which a host of influences collide in a strikingly coherent way, though anybody approaching it looking for a metallic fix will end up disappointed.

The first track here, City Lights, is a fiendishly clever composition, hypnotic and puzzling, and I think perhaps sets up a standard that the rest of the album doesn’t quite match. It is a seamless (or, as seamless as you could hope for) fusion of trip-hop and funeral doom, as improbable as that may sound, opening with a neat jam of laid-back electronic beats and a funky but sinister bass guitar riff, misted over by ambient noise (police sirens) and gravelly synths. But then, instead of forming the basis for some kind of downbeat jam session, a sickly layer of croaking, Nortt-like guitar distortion bleeds into the sound, imposing a thoroughly odd juxtaposition. At first it seems surreal and awkward, but, something about the similarly glowering mood of each element, or the fact that the tempos and tonalities of crawling doom and soporific electronica mesh so tightly together, make this a convincing hybrid.

Throughout the rest of the album this eclecticism remains a defining characteristic, but we never really lose touch with the dour introversion of this opening. La Page at times feels slightly unconvincing, with a weakly ticking drum sound setting up a sort of jazz waltz, replete with wavering vocals. But even where elements don’t entirely work, they are just about glued into a coherent work of art by this consistent sense of mood. Here, a grimy guitar solo, buzzing blackened guitar tones, and a ranting sample from Ben Kingsley in The Wackness are overlaid to make a suitably mysterious piece of post-rock. Similarly, the ballad-like Through the Fear only deepens the grimly enigmatic aura with its sustained organ tones and distant shrieking vocals that lurk deep in the background.

Despite the promotional material labelling this as ‘depressive black metal’, that remains merely one element of a much more eclectic whole. Penultimate track Outside… Maybe is the closest the record comes to shifting these components to the foreground (save the harrowing closer Blase), but even here its thin, straining tremolo dirge is polluted by alien sounds, including a looping harmonica lick that seems almost mocking. Because of its variety it is a mixed bag, with some moments feeling noticeably weaker than others. But, the downbeat, smoky mood it creates and holds throughout gives it coherence as a profoundly dark urban landscape.