Alcest: Kodama

ALCEST: KODAMA (2016)

1) Kodama; 2) Eclosion; 3) Je Suis D'Ailleurs; 4) Untouched; 5) Oiseaux De Proie; 6) Onyx; 7) Notre Sang Et Nos Pensées*.

Kodama means ʽtree-spiritʼ in Japanese, with the concept going back to prehistoric times, but it does not take a Japanologist to understand that Neige learned about it not from reading Japanese folklore, but rather from watching Princess Mononoke, since 99% of people get their 99% of in­formation on traditional Japanese culture from Miyazaki-san. That's OK, though, it's not like Alcest have switched to playing traditional Japanese music or anything — in fact, we could all probably see it coming: sooner or later, any blackgazer is going to have to confess that he was inspired and influenced by Japanese mixes of beauty and horror anyway, because blackgaze is all about mixing beauty with horror, and who does that better than the Japanese — Ivanka Trump?..

Anyway, I was quick enough in my review of Shelter to suggest that Alcest's genuinely black­gazing days are over — here, as if shaking off one type of slumber to immediately jump into another, Neige makes a focused effort to return to his «roots», and make another album straight in the vein of his first two. The downside is that you may have to go back to the first two in order to check if there's any significant differences, and even I am a little lazy to do that. The upside is that a shift of mood/vibe is almost always a good thing anyway for somebody who works in the «static» section of the musical business, and there does seem to be a little extra spark in Kodama that you sometimes observe in those types of comebacks that are not made exclusively for the money. Yet it is all subtle and subjective — and on the rougher side of the equation, what you have here is simply six more (seven more, if you count the extra track on the deluxe edition) cold, dark, snowy, statically beautiful sonic panoramas from the French master of texture.

Once again, as the title track kicks into gear, we find ourselves treading through heavy, but soft and un-treacherous snow, covering a dense (but not too dense) forest of pine trees on a moonlit (but not too moonlit) night — without any idea of why we are here, where are we going, and whe­ther the forest has an end or the journey has a purpose. We do know that the forest is enchan­ted, as the kodamas are sending us haunted signals with their haunted vocals, ringing in unison with the jangly and the distorted guitars, but it's not like they really care about you — you're no­thing but an impartial observer, and even when the distorted guitars take over for a while and start a power chord bombarding, there is still no impression that something is, you know, happening. Maybe just a stronger wind.

There's four additional tracks on here, but the vibe on each and every one of them is exactly the same — occasionally, you get some growling vocals (ʽEclosionʼ), for old times' sake, but they are neither scary nor apocalyptic. (Maybe one of the kodamas just got thirsty.) Only the last track, ʽOnyxʼ, is different, and not necessarily for the better — it's just one long drone, recorded in lo-fi for the sake of amusement and working as a «one last breath» outro that you will probably want to skip even if you happen to be sufficiently enchanted by the rest of them.

Honestly, I am not quite sure what to do here, but in the end, I will probably have to leave it with a modest thumbs up, because (a) I really like the vocal melodic hook on ʽKodamaʼ (closest the album gets to being genuinely haunting), (b) I think that the album shows some progress in the art of working with overdubs (Souvenirs sounds a little crude and un-subtle in comparison), (c) I've always had a soft spot for French impressionist artists influenced by Japanese culture — so, roll over Pissarro, tell Debussy the news, or something to that effect. None of which will probably ward off the inevitable — that in a few months (weeks) Kodama will be robustly wiped out of my me­mory, and then Neige can start it all over again without any serious risk of being accused of self-plagiarism in the future.

Alcest: Shelter

ALCEST: SHELTER (2014)

1) Wings; 2) Opale; 3) La Nuit Marche Avec Moi; 4) Voix Sereine; 5) L'Eveil Des Muses; 6) Shelter; 7) Away; 8) Délivrance.

And now we finally know the truth: Neige's preoccupation with «black metal» was really but an accident, a result of an unlucky psychic derailment. It took the guy about ten years to sort that out, but he did manage to reconnect with his own true self at last: Shelter erases the last, already bare­ly visible traces of heavy music from Alcest's palette, and replaces them with heavenly lushness, as Neige and Winterhalter place themselves in the self-assured hands of Birgir Jón Birgisson, the producer of Sigur Rós — who, in his turn, teams them up with Amiina, the Icelandic chamber music / electronic ensemble, well known for working together with Sigur Rós on quite a few oc­casions. Well, if you think about it, it was probably bound to happen, sooner or later.

The decision was clearly a gamble, and it is not yet clear how much it cost Neige in terms of mass quantities of admiration — so far, I have read many an old fan's grumble on how the band lost its unique identity by sacrificing the «black» in favor of the «lush». Now, they say, all we have is an inferior, unnecessary, pale shadow of Sigur Rós, technically pretty, but boring and devoid of its own vision. Trying to progress and develop is all very fine, they say, but not at the expense of dissolving yourself in the ocean of imitation. This point of view is totally acceptable if you really thought that Souvenirs D'Un Autre Monde was some sort of groundbreaking achievement, a fabulous milestone in the development of «blackgaze»; but if you just thought, «hmm, nice dark droning music, whatever», then it is not excluded that Shelter will please you more.

In any case, complaints of «selling out» are entirely missing the point, because, composition-wise, Shelter is as much a proper brainchild of Neige as everything else. Shimmery, jangly guitars in­stead of thick distorted tones and clean, pretty-melancholic vocals instead of deathly growling are simply a different kind of coating, and it's not even as if they weren't already in Neige's inventory from the very beginning, either. As for the strings of Amiina, they are mostly relegated to the background for ambience, so, in the end, it all still sounds more like old-school Alcest than clas­sic Sigur Rós, with Neige's guitar playing at the center of everything.

So let us just ask ourselves two consecutive questions, the only ones, in my opinion, that make sense in the context of an album like Shelter: (a) does Shelter work as enjoyable, tasteful back­ground music? and (b) does Shelter contain any moments or periods of «heavenly beauty» that would rise it above the status of background music?

The first question I answer in the positive, and, in fact, with the jarring «black» moments out of the picture, Shelter is unquestionably the finest «background muzak» album to come from Alcest so far. Some of the songs feature subtle dynamic build-ups (most notably the huge ten-minute grand-finale track), but they are so subtle indeed that they probably won't be able to rip you out of the process of doing whatever you're doing while listening to it. On the other hand, the general mix of the thing, where the guitars usually sound like they are lightly wobbling in space, the strings hover behind them like perfectly normal particle vibrations, and Neige is trying to mes­merize you with the latest in French lullaby craft, is a perfect soundtrack for doing something... like, oh I dunno, writing this here review, for instance.

The second question is trickier. It does not seem to me as if Neige were stringing together chords that weren't already well explored previously — but there are some individual moments that are sufficiently simple, yet at the same time quite deep-reaching. I am speaking particularly of the second half of ʽVoix Sereineʼ (a series of three-chord "nah nah nah"'s that gradually blossoms into an ecstatic merry-go-round); of the delay/echo effect on the guitar strings in ʽL'Eveil Des Musesʼ, which does evoke a bit of a «muse-centered» feeling; and the huge finale of ʽDelivranceʼ, whose build-up is sufficiently grand to stir up the soul... I think.

Still, «I think» is not quite the same as «I am sure». In reality, my feelings are quite torn between realizing that this is indeed the kind of music that Neige must be hearing in his heart even when sleeping — and then realizing that most of its effectiveness comes from clever exploitation of modern recording and mixing technology. And a song like ʽDélivranceʼ, with its ten minutes of powerful building-up and meticulous winding down, lays claim to overwhelming your emotions and flooding your senses (otherwise, it would have no reason to exist), but is there any actual ma­gic to that overwhelming, or is this just a guaranteed-to-work recipé that could be generated by a computer, with just a few parameters fed in? I really have no idea, and this shadow of doubt that refuses to go away prevents me from properly falling under the spell of Shelter, and once you have refused to fall under that spell, you can really only use it as background muzak.

But it's good enough to at least deserve an honest thumbs up — sufficiently different from Neige's previous work to warrant an autonomous listen, never ugly or, in fact, anything less than «pretty», and it makes you want to ask unanswerable questions, so I guess we should count that as a success story, and the idea to bring in the Sigur Rós people was relatively fruitful. Coming up: an equally productive collaboration with Godspeed You! Black Emperor? The modern world of music may be running out of creative steam for all we know, but at least the combinatory potential is on a constant rise.

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Alcest: Les Voyages De L'Ame

ALCEST: LES VOYAGES DE L'AME (2012)

1) Autre Temps; 2) Là Ou Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvelles; 3) Les Voyages De L'Ame; 4) Nous Sommes L'Eme­raude; 5) Beings Of Light; 6) Faiseurs De Mondes; 7) Havens; 8) Summer's Glory.

If we (or, at least, those of us who know either French or Google Translate) concentrate on the album and song titles long enough, the first and, for now, only three records of Alcest may seem like a trilogy: Fairy Tale, Space Journey, and now, with Les Voyages De L'Ame (Soul Journeys) comes Transcendental / Religious Experience. Naturally, this is but a subjective interpretation, but it helps — when it comes to tracing the subtle differences that justify Neige's productivity.

In a way, the third album takes a step back: compared with its immediate predecessor, it is notice­ably less «metal» in nature, with growling vocals making only a brief appearance in ʽFaiseurs Des Mondesʼ and heavy guitar tones used sparingly and almost always as a backdrop for light-ringing melodic passages. On the other hand, far more attention is paid to vocal arrangements — ʽBeings Of Lightʼ is almost completely wordless, and the focus is on New Age-style angelic choral harmonies; other songs generally tend to veer closer to the French pop-inspired melodicity of Souvenirs D'Un Autre Monde. In other words, Neige has mellowed out once more, and the territory through which the composer's (or the listener's?) soul is supposed to journey seems pretty safe for it — light, bliss, beauty, the works.

At this point, one thing I'd like to specifically praise about the album is the drum work by the mys­terious «Winterhalter» (going by the real name of Jean Deflandre). Take my advice — if you happen to listen to this stuff and get bored after a while because of all the shoegazing repetition, switch your attention to the drummer guy for a bit, since he is really doing an amazing job out there: nothing particularly complex, but he goes way beyond simply keeping the beat, as you'd expect from an «ambient»-oriented record. There are all sorts of rolls, flips, tricky syncopes, build-ups and releases that do not really corrupt or sway the planned atmosphere, but make the whole experience more fun — the guy just happens to be one of those swell drummers, like Blon­die's Clem Burke, who refuses to conform to limitations of the formula and keeps inventing new and new figures out of his head. It is double fun on those rare occasions when Neige agrees to speed up the tempo, at least a little bit, like on the final section of ʽLà Ou Naissent Les Couleursʼ.

As for the melodies themselves, they present no surprises: once again, the craft is not so much in the base melodic figures (most of which show elegant geometric precision, but do not seem to carry a lot of emotional load) as in Neige's trademark crescendos, and he has not mastered any new tricks in that department — even the guitar tones mostly remain the same. ʽBeings Of Lightʼ is arguably the most atypical of these compositions, and even that one perfectly fits inside the for­mula. ʽSummer's Gloryʼ, respecting the title, is made to look like an unusually uplifting anthem, and its vocals owe the most to the old school French «mood song».

But albums like these are usually remembered by their longest tracks, and the longest track here, ʽLà Ou Naissent Les Couleurs Nouvellesʼ, consisting of a slower and faster part linked through some psychedelic jangle, is not particularly impressive, other than Winterhalter's terrific drum contributions, even if the fast section is, indeed, the closest that Alcest has ever approached to «rocking» (not that «rocking» was ever on the project's pre-planned agenda). This and similar tracks only further confirm that the Alcest formula cannot be improved upon, at least not by Neige himself. The guy is an admirable master of form, but unless he begins coming up with truly stunning musical phrases or steps away from the self-imposed «drone and repetition only» constraint, his fanbase is not likely to expand.

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Alcest: Ecailles De Lune

ALCEST: ECAILLES DE LUNE (2010)

1) Ecailles De Lune (Pt. 1); 2) Ecailles De Lune (pt. 2); 3) Percées De Lumière; 4) Abysses; 5) Solar Song; 6) Sur L'Océan Couleur De Fer.

On their second album, Alcest are almost a band: Neige is still credited for most of the work, but there is also a separate drummer (going under the name of «Winterhalter», which, I would say, is a rather gross intrusion of the Germanic element into Alcest's French conceptualism), and multi-instrumentalist Fursy Teyssier also contributes a brief atmospheric interlude (ʽAbyssesʼ) that mainly consists of the heaves and ho's of a huge electronic bellows, but still provides some merry company to Neige's soliloquy existence.

But none of this really matters if you are not into that whole trivia-seeking enterprise, because in general, Ecailles De Lune (Scales Of The Moon for those unfamiliar with Anglo-Nor­man) is not at all different from its predecessor. Actually, I would say that it is a little worse. Worried, per­haps, that his black metal roots were altogether neglected and eclipsed by the melancholia and sentimentalism of Souvenirs, Neige now takes steps to ensure that the sound be a tad heavier and gruffer, even going as far as to use growling vocals on a couple of the tracks — and in the pro­cess, something important is lost.

The two-part, 18-minute-long title suite that opens the album should suffice to illustrate that point. It works at the intersection of two guitar tones — a ringing, echoey, «lunar» tone for melancholia and psychedelia, and a noisy, distorted, «earthy» tone for martiality and aggression — and two vocal styles (clean / romantic in the first part, growling / apocalyptic in the second). By shifting around the dominance of one tone / style over the other, and by alternating loud and quiet parts, Neige gives the whole thing some dynamics and development. But the actual musical themes are not very interesting, and the vocal melodies are unmemorable — and overall, the impression of being transplanted into an «autre monde», this time around, is not nearly as strong as when you first put on ʽPrintemps Emeraudeʼ. And I blame the superfluous «metallization» for that: there is only so much distance you can cover, speeding along the black metal trail, before your imagery ceases to be evocative and becomes, at best, boring, and at worst, self-parodic.

It gets better as we move along, though: ʽSolar Songʼ tones down the metal aspects in order to make way for an inspired vocal part that sounds, indeed, like some sort of ritualistic invocation of the supernatural — with the vocals themselves «felt» from behind the thick curtains of droning guitar overdubs rather than properly heard, which is only natural, since the layman is not suppo­sed to be let inside the Holy of Holies, right? But the best track is still the last one: ʽSur L'Océan Couleur De Ferʼ completely jettisons the metal element, being built almost entirely around one repetitive, plaintive guitar figure, to which Neige then adds layer after layer of extra acoustic rhythms, electric flourishes, synthesizers, faraway percussion bursts, and New Age vocalises. The lyrics, formally interpreted, speak of massive deaths in the ocean waves — Titanic? Lusitania? whatever — but the music is unnaturally calm and quiet for such a subject, more like a small-scale requiem mass rather than a direct depiction of some gruesome tragedy.

On the whole, this is not bad stuff, but it does seem as if Neige had mostly emptied his bag of subconscious reminiscences on the first Alcest album, and is now forcing himself to come up with new impressions on the spot — not exactly a «sophomore slump», because it is very hard to distinguish efficient from inefficient in the case of such static, atmospheric music; but still a rela­tive disappointment. Perhaps it could have been better, if more of the tracks were similar in form and spirit to the album's subtle, lamentative coda — then again, this would have rendered it even more monotonous than it is, so let us refrain from guesswork. In any case, what with so many artists today giving their best shot on their first album and then fizzling and fading away over the course of ten more, it would probably require a miracle for Alcest to best his own Souvenirs, so just lower your expectations and be done with it.

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Alcest: Souvenirs D'Un Autre Monde

ALCEST: SOUVENIRS D'UN AUTRE MONDE (2007)

1) Printemps Emeraude; 2) Souvenirs D'Un Autre Monde; 3) Les Iris; 4) Ciel Errant; 5) Sur L'Autre Rive Je T'At­ten­drai; 6) Tir Nan Og.

From an «everyday basis» point of view, the only shoegazing band the regular Joe really needs to hear, if only to understand what all the fuss is really about, is probably My Bloody Valentine. But even the most limited formula in the world can always opt for some freshness and individuality if you succeed in coming up with the right extra ingredients. And particularly in the 21st century, where we constantly suffer from lack of freshness, this odd need for «synthesizing the unsynthe­sizable» has revived pretty much every musical genre and sub-direction ever thought of by man, woman, quadrupede, or mineral — shoegazing included.

«Alcest», essentially a one-man project by French musician Stéphane Paut, better known un­der the code name «Neige» («Snow»), has its roots neither in pop nor in psychedelia, but in black metal: Neige's pedigree begins with Peste Noire, a leading French black metal outfit heavily in­fluenced by the likes of Cannibal Corpse — their discography includes such telling titles as Aryan Supremacy (an early demo where Neige was still playing drums rather than guitar) and Folkfuck Folie, among other things. If this worries you, do not be worried as far as Alcest is concerned: Neige has gone on record stating that, for him, his career in Peste Noire merely satis­fied an «urge of animal and primitive regression», and we all have our demons to exorcise.

Neige's black metal history does somehow influence his shaping of Alcest — no wonder this style of music is sometimes called «blackgazing» — but there is nothing particularly ugly, vile, racist, or shock-oriented about that influence. The blackness, created by the distortion and feed­back of the rhythm guitar, is only there to provide an important counterpoint for the «shoegazing» lead parts, which, on their part, are always set up in «melancholic beauty» mode. The sound is therefore reminiscent, at the same time, of such contemporaries as And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (although those guys are far more noisy and «rock»-oriented) and Agalloch (although those guys always hunt for a doom-laden effect, which is not the purpose of Alcest).

But Neige has one more card up his sleeve — the vocal parts, usually handled by himself, but occa­sionally by Audrey Silvain, his partner in his third project, Amesoeurs. And this is where the Frenchness comes through: strip away the thick distorted guitars, replace the shoegazing drone with some light jazz muzak, and you will have yourself a sentimental / melancholic / atmospheric French intelli-pop record circa the mid-Seventies or so. The effect that this particular synthesis has on the feelings may not, in fact, probably will not be immediate, but eventually, it does let itself be known — the triple combination of «earthiness» (black distorted fire), «transcendence» (shoegazing trills and drones), and «lonesome beauty» (distant, echoey vocal parts that always seem to be coming from somewhere under the ground) makes for some tasty escapism.

Alcest's stated musical philosophy is that he does not create, but re-creates the sonic and visual images of a Fairy Land that he claims to have come in contact with in his childhood (and I do not necessarily disbelieve him — it all depends on what exact kinds of fairy tales he might have read instead of doing his sums and playing football in the yard). Naturally, the musical invention of ano­ther world is not his personal know-how — from Sgt. Pepper to Amon Düül II to Cocteau Twins and whoever else, people in pop music have been doing that ever since pop music became an art. But Neige makes an explicit point of it: the album title is literally translated from French as Memories Of Another World, and, if anything, it lets you know that this is not just some sort of unpredictable experiment, but that the man really knows what it is that he is doing.

That world of his is not particularly diverse. The music may get softer or louder, switch from acoustic to electric and back, shift between male and female vocals, or even show some mild Cel­tic influence in ʽTir Nan Ogʼ, but the mood on all the six tracks is essentially the same. The lead parts conjure sadness, the vocals conjure elfishness, and the rhythm compensates for the elfish­ness with earthy heaviness (although, contrary to some reviews, there is nothing truly dark, sinis­ter, or threatening about any of these compositions). I do, however, wish that there were more of those pretty acoustic folksy interludes — the patterns that Neige plays are anything but complex, but each of these repetitive acoustic tapestries that he weaves is generally more memorable than the metal/shoegaze duets, which can get way too samey even with lowered expectations.

The repetitiveness itself is not a problem, though: the title track states that "d'où je viens le temps n'existe pas, les secondes deviennent des heures" ("where I come from time does not exist, se­conds become hours"), and the whole point of the album, indeed, is to make you lose track of the time — including subtle variations on previously played themes that make you wonder if you have not accidentally pressed the rewind button. The key thing here is that if, for you, at least fifteen or twenty seconds of this album work fine, the whole album will work fine, since its pri­mary purpose is to put you in a specific trance-like frame of mind. If you are well experienced, however, in the art of shoegazing, the trick may not work, and then you will probably be able to take no more than the aforementioned twenty seconds of it, in toto.

Of course, even being fond of Souvenirs D'Un Autre Monde does not equal finding it a truly «magic» experience: Neige, to me, is less of a genius than a master craftsman, painstakingly learning his trade so as to be able to express his childhood dreams, much like a master pilot is diligently working on perfecting his skills so as to be able to do that fabulous loop he imagined himself doing when he was six years old. But as a first significant attempt at catching that dream, it is highly impressive — especially if you keep in mind that this is a one-man band project, with Neige himself responsible for most of the overdubs. Therefore, a certified thumbs up here, even if I cannot claim to have ever been to the same place as Neige in my own childhood. (For that matter, I'm more of an ʽI Am The Walrusʼ type of guy, myself...)

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