Thursday, November 27, 2014

‘There's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight’ by David Sylvian.

The voices deliver the strangest music nowadays. First we had the wonderful Scott Walker album with SunnO))) and now here is one by the great David Sylvian. Not enough suffering in his music, said the one about the other once. But here is some suffering anyway. 'There's a light...' is a collaboration with long suffering poet laureate Franz Wright. I know many fans from the first hour were appalled because it is not David reciting the words but the old man Wright. And it is poetry, not songs. What can I say? A difficult album. And that's mildly put. But we love 'difficult', don't we? Especially the last 20 minutes are very captivating... "If you liked being born, you will love dying..." Did you spot the change in tone in Franz Wright's voice towards the end of the album? The humoristic and playful is suddenly gone. A crack in his voice when he starts to sound utterly desperate and lonely. It's a breathtaking moment. The cleverness disappears. Human warmth slips in. The piece almost becomes 'emotional'.... It's the best part of the album. I thought I heard Dai Fujikura somewhere, but he is not on the album. Sylvian is not the one to sit still. He is continuously looking for new adventures and collaborations. This time it is Toshimaru Nakamura and veteran Otomo Yoshihide delivering the samples. Musically, the album even holds out without the poet's voice which comes unobtrusively in the way of the freeflowing brushes of music once in a while. I can enjoy David Sylvian's new album to a certain level, but I'm sure he has become some kind of muscian's musician. There are certain aspects of 'There's a light...' that will forever escape me. That's normal. Is it really necessary to know where every note every snippet comes from? The whole history of contemporary music that was crammed into one piece of music? I'm surely not the one looking to understand everything. BTW, I seem to be a poet's poet myself. I know all about it. The things I put into my poems will not necessarily be recognised by readers. Maybe only by connoisseurs. And then what? I don't expect anybody to fully understand what I've written. Dedicated DS fans will be chewing on this. Ha...

PS: One would hope that Scott and David will work together one day. At least here is the whimsical proof that there is a lot of suffering in David Sylvian's work anyway.

'Centaure' by Franck Vigroux on Cosmo Rhythmatic.

FRANCK VIGROUX - CENTAURE from dautrescordes on Vimeo.

Listening to the music of Franck Vigroux is a musical experience comparable to reading Cioran. It's intense! I was reading and rereading 'Le Lyrisme Absolu' by E.M. Cioran from his book 'Sur les Cimes du Désespoir' and then inadvertently I switched to listening to Franck Vigroux's new album on the brand new Berlin based label Cosmo Rhythmatic. I suddenly saw it before me and I immediately made the link. Like an epiphany. Vigroux in 'Tempest' cooly hunched over his instruments while Antoine Schmitt projects ever evolving, stellar algorhytmical projections on the videoscreen behind him. Amidst all the bad art being made in the name of Cioran, this seems to be the real thing. It felt like a total experience and the absolute lyricism we are looking for and that Cioran wrote about. Then after that I took a look at the stunning 'Croix' videos and I had to think about the words 'le lyrisme absolu est celui des derniers instants' from the same chapter... On his new EP 'Centaure' Vigroux even goes one step further: the noise, the abstraction, the experiment on 'Centaure', '2024' and 'Vesuve'... I don't know if you ever read 'Le Bain de Feu' by Cioran? It's about the most intense hair-raising philosophical text ever written. I feel like that too when I listen to the new album. Vigroux puts you head down in a scorching bath of fire. Vigroux is probably the most intense musician of the moment. But then, in comes Shapednoise to scrape together your remaining ashes with different abstract shapes and forms of rhythms. Vigroux never lets us down exploring this experimental way or that noise way, but 'Centaure' is surely the most powerful thing we heard from him since 'We (Nous Autres)'. Brilliant! Video by Gregory Robin.

Music by Franck Vigroux, Label Cosmo Rhythmatic, boomkat.com/vinyl/1147530-franck-vigroux-centaure, boomkat.com/downloads/1147497-franck-vigroux-centaure