Normotone (or Normotone et alii) is the solo project of Bruno Laborde who has been working in electronic music since 1994. Former projects include Axonal Warfare (1994-1997) and Neon Cage Experiment (2003-2006), as well as producing remixes for such artists as HIV+, Ex_Tension, Necrotek, Babylone Chaos, and most recently Architect. This is his first release under the Normotone moniker. Other contributors to 'Inward Structures' include Laurent Kistler (Neon Cage Experiment), TAT, Serge Usson (Neon Rain), Angelika, Charlotte, and VX (Vincent Villalon) in the vocal and lyric department on several tracks, and Polygon and One Droid And Its Man for the two remixes at the end of the album.

'Inward Structures' is really difficult to pin down. On one hand, it is rather experimental (even for Tympanik) in places, and I had a very difficult time getting into it. On the other, some of the tracks are quite provocative and well-structured compositions. The first couple of tracks passed without leaving much of an impression at all, even after hearing them several times. There are still tracks that don't sit well with me, such as 'Confessions Of A Daydreamer" with its abrasive rhythmic component and deadpan recitation by Laurent K. With "Isolation Is My Achievement" however, business began to pick up. It's a slow, dirty track with delightfully doleful vocals by TAT. "The Unutterable Beauty" is a deliciously weird cinematic dark ambient piece with industrialized rhythm. It has this bass that sounds like a fog horn in the distance. Really kind of scary the way it all comes off sounding. Serge waxes nihilistically poetic on "These Hearts" with the music sounding little more than an industrial landscape for his recitation until more than halfway through the piece when it really began to come alive and build instrumentally. Probably not what you would expect with guitar entering into the fray, but I kind of liked it. 'Primer' was just too fragmented and fractured for me to get into; episodic bits of rhythm and electronics that lacked cohesiveness. "Milky Skin In A Yellow Fuzzy Light" features vocals by Angelika and is a cross between ethereal pop shoegaze and dubby downtempo industrial. One of the best tracks on the album so far. (Eh, I'm a sucker for shoegaze with female vocals.) "Frozen Leaves" is another nice track with female vocals, this time by Charlotte although they're more along the lines of Beth Gibbons, Allison Shaw or Kirsty Thirk; very moody and well executed.

'Black Horses of Destruction' is a messy piece of Industrial business and although the first part contains a rather interesting controlled industrialized martial rhythm with spoken (female) samples and tense strings way in the background, after a brief piano interlude, the rest of the piece becomes utter chaos with vocals from VX to match. I couldn't wrap my head around this one. Polygon's remix of 'Milky Skin In A Yellow Fuzzy Light" takes out the shoegaze element and substitutes a more subdued electro-industrial rhythm. Polygon also puts electronic processing on the vocals, and to tell the truth, I didn't much care for that. The rhythm and accompanying synth bass was good though, but I preferred the original. As far as what One Droid And Its Man did for the remix of "The Unutterable Beauty" I couldn't really tell. My copy of the CD skipped through much of it rendering it unlistenable for all practical purposes. At first I thought it was the remix, but apparently not. Nobody could make something that unlistenable. No matter how I tried to clean the CD, nothing worked. Chalk it up to a flawed pressing.

So here I am, ambivalent again, liking about half the album and not caring much about the rest of it. I think Bruno tends to be best working with other people and when he has a clear direction to shoot for. Perhaps I was missing the point, but on a number of tracks solely done by Bruno, the ideas, although composed of interesting sounds and rhythms sounded vague to me and lacked form and style; too scattered to be really engaging. If you're considering a purchase, I'd advise trying to find streaming tracks to preview in their entirety from this album first rather than clips, because in this case, clips just won't paint an accurate picture.