Celebrating two decades of sonic experimentation, thisquietarmy—Eric Quach’s long-running ambient drone project—announces the release of ‘Langue Hybride’ on April 18, 2025. The album will be available through A Thousand Arms in the U.S. and Consouling Sounds for the rest of the world, with pre-orders now open.
The first single, ‘Respirer l’instabilité,’ offers an early glimpse into the album’s expansive and layered sound.
Written and arranged in under a month, ‘Langue Hybride’ was conceived during Quach’s residency at the Centre d’Expérimentation Musical (CEM) in Saguenay—Lac-St-Jean, Québec.
The project was an intensive exercise in collaboration, as Quach was tasked with composing an hour of live-performable material alongside musicians he had never worked with before. “The goal of the residency was to perform one hour of music ready to be played live, recorded, and filmed in front of an audience, which meant I had to write new music from scratch from the first day there, with people I’ve never met nor played with before,” says Quach.
The assembled musicians came from disparate backgrounds—classical, jazz, funk, and rock—forcing them all to step outside their comfort zones. “We had to find ways to push everyone out of their comfort zone in order to bridge the open improvisation of jazz with the austere classical, including my own!” Quach explains.
Juggling structured composition and improvisational elements, Quach worked outside of rehearsals to refine the material, listening to recordings, diagramming song structures, and developing motifs to shape the final arrangements. “Working with several people all at once while trying to compose the music, sorting through the improvised ideas, and blending everything together was incredibly overwhelming and intense,” he recalls. “I had to do a lot of work outside these jam sessions, listening to recordings and creating diagrams for structures and to explicitly express what mood, motifs, emotions I wanted out of all the different parts. So ‘Langue Hybride’ also extends to musical and sonic languages.”
By the end of the residency, the newly formed collective performed to an audience of 100 people, presenting the full body of work created in just under a month. “It was really a full year or two of work, condensed in a month,” Quach reflects. Despite the rapid turnaround, the material proved to be some of his most ambitious to date.
The album also ties into Quach’s earliest musical output, bringing things full circle. Before thisquietarmy, he played in the post-rock band Destroyalldreamers (2002-2007), a collective effort that contrasted with his later solo work. “Destroyalldreamers was really the first time I started making music in general and thisquietarmy was an anti-band, anti-rule, anti-label solo release.” ‘Langue Hybride’ bridges that divide, incorporating an idea from the Destroyalldreamers era on ‘Organismes en aérobiose,’ a track that had remained shelved until now.
Mixed by Quach and mastered by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Constellation Records), ‘Langue Hybride’ presents a multi-layered fusion of drone, post-rock, and experimental soundscapes. As a further tribute to his roots, Quach will mark the album’s release with a rare full-band performance at Dunk! Festival, commemorating both the 10th anniversary of his 2015 Dunk! set and his 20 years in music.
