The Marseillais of 1003 (if you're classy, which is unlikely since you're reading this, you'll pronounce it ΙΟΟΞ) have a knack for number puns. It's like a regular pun, but for robots: if you read the band's name in a mirror, you'll get the release date of EP 0.3 in the european fashion, which is 30/01. Clever. As its name doesn't suggest, 0.3 is the sequel to EP 1.0 (putting it all together gives us... 1003, well, well!) and you'll understand: we're here to make a few oddities. The first is to blur the lines with an immediately satisfying freedom: industrial, pop, post-punk... it doesn't matter, 1003 experiments, plays and juggles with it all to breathe vivid emotions into the machines.
The EP starts at The End, serving as the beginning. With its cold rhythm and deep voice manipulated to sound more mechanical and frightening, the introduction pulses and threatens before humanity gradually takes over through vocals that brighten and lighten the picture. Addition by addition, 1003 fleshes out its music, the intensity increases, always guided by this relentless mechanical rhythm. There is a desire to make people dance, to be easy to love, but also a taste for sonic exploration, and all of this is refreshing, both literally and figuratively. There's a bit of Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile period (and its remixes), a bit of David Bowie (Earthling and Blackstar period, when the danceable formulas became more mutant than ever), artists who know how to blur the lines and make the strange mainstream (and vice versa).
The torments of The Contradiction bring a post-punk nervousness, which The Body's bass later revisits, inviting a visceral urgency and rougher edges to a vaporous, dreamlike ensemble. The melancholic big beat finale The Shapes leaves us on this frenetic, labyrinthine note, this combination of unbridled electronica and a soul that breaks free to hover over the track. Singer Jessy Bengold's sensitive, fragile, and ethereal voice is a particularly effective medium for communicating emotions with authenticity (and, it may seem trivial but it's important: singing in tune, clearly, in clean English is rare enough in France that it immediately stands out). Meanwhile, 1003 invites us into its contemplative reveries, elegant bittersweet introspections whose restraint serves as a launch pad for the final sections, which feel like liberating cathartic flights of fancy (The Debater, The Hole in the Ground).
With its bursts of industrial rock guitar, bizarre techno touches, emphasis on organic sounds, and pop sweetness that ultimately adds to its strangeness, 0.3 is an EP that delights us on many levels. We love its freedom, its uninhibited and liberated approach. There are oddities, ghosts in the machines... but above all, there is a talent for making songs that work, things that touch the listener, that work, that surprise us but don't lose us in the process. It's done with both the brain and the guts, and it stimulates both equally. 1003 is an ambitious and fascinating project.
