Malot Forlag
V.A. : The Devil In Love (US,UK,D,S,F,JAP,2011)****
-a soundtrack to the 1772 novel-
Whoever or how this could have been compiled so well together is a great mystery to me, because this double CD sounds exactly like it was intended, as a compilation of tracks that work like a book of songs and instrumentals. The concept is the inspirations from the mysterious French novel from 1772 by Jacques Cazotte called “The Devil In Love”.
The tracks really melt from one track, song, instrumental and mood to the next, the first record being more acoustic with more attention to the spoken word or translated into song passages, the second album being more or less a bit more a dark descriptive evolving atmosphere.
More or less the first couple of tracks introduce the story from a more hermaphrodite / androgyny storyteller in cabaratier context. The Scarring Party does this with an old time flavoured monograph-like distorted voice accompanied by vibraphone and accordion, turning to a normal voice further on and a rhythmic pulse and banjo. The Tiger Lillies sing in cabaret-style with a matured broken voice, the sexless vision about the love for this possibly not to trust creature (could love ever change this aspect?..). With additional keyboards and piano there’s an association towards a Gothic atmosphere in this as well.
Then we have the darker songwriters, starting with The Coffinshakers, somewhat in the direction of Nick Cave areas, accompanied by acoustic guitar, followed by Paul Roland with acoustic guitar rhythms, and some sparse percussion and keyboards. Jarboe’s (from Swans) guitar used an interesting experimental raw percussive and prepared guitar effect repetition for a rhythmic foundation mixed with neo-folk piano and textured keyboards, a telephone voice with a dark effect of spoken word. There’s a weird background voice too. The guitar with piano creates a rhythmic gothic atmosphere.
From here on some 80s underground influences starts to appear, darker edges that inspired areas like neo-folk too. Unusual for Sharron Kraus she created here an atmospheric only track with overlapping electronics and spacey voice textures.
After this small intermezzo we come back to the real folk. Glockenspiel and acoustic guitars accompany Piers Blewett’s song. The melody in the guitars very slowly develops with resonating silence, building up the song with its own sighing breathing out rhythm. Rikke Lundgreen & Ane Lan’s track slowly develops out of the same silence, with two overlapping voices. The lead male’s voice very much has something of these warm Argentine acid folk voices, the music develops with the guitars and overlapping voices further but has some free and off-beat element too, it has at moments something of some of the off key Finnish freefolk releases too (the vocal textures for instance). Exceptional is Stone Breath’s song contribution with a beautiful guitar melody and a folky female singer, some cello texture, recalling a rather medieval atmosphere. There’s some additional harpsichord and with a subtle second voice added in the second part.
Then the mood changes again with Brace/Choir (from Germany), a calm indie-rock track with very echoing resonating guitar and rhythm guitar dominating more and more electric and drums with shoegaze effect. Differnet (from Sweden) uses a very strange, in fact beautiful resonating melody with a formed tone of unclear origin, possibly voice or clarinet or so, with additional singing in French, with some notes on Rhodes and atmospheric keyboards, a very special unusual atmosphere.
Gaving Friday (from Virgin Prunes) takes over the Rhodes like tones for a musical-box like intro for his spoken word (poetry like reciting) led track by baritone voice. Deep singing voices and church organ accompany this far in the distant.
This leads us to more of the environment's sideshow descriptions. Shinkiro’s track created an ambient drone atmosphere with some movements, sleepy string like tension voice somewhere like distant space slumbering soundtrack with resonating vibrations, dense sounds like orchestral-like echoes and also electric tensions, very much the soundtrack of darkness in sleep.
Good to have an acoustic jazz improvisation after this by John Zorn and his chamber group (double bass, violin, cello). Lots of spizcatto and movements of fingers here and there.
Shinjuku Thief created another soundtrack with church-like improvised singing, resonating strings and string drones and orchestral whirls and percussive echoes, this has deep dark atmosphere, flavoured with night visions.
(Berlin based) Molly Nilsson’s track after this is lighter like an intermezzo dance arranged with automated different keyboards, and with a certain Gothic effect despite the light melody.
Art Zoyd’s (from France) track is the longest (over 13 minutes). It is like a soundtrack with church organ, percussive harpsichord-effects like keyboards, wind and a collage of sounds and voices, in multiple layers of contributions, partly like a computerized keyboard composition, with the kind of dark contrasts and rhythmical evolutional themes with somewhat melody-descriptive textures, like we’re used to hearing from this band. Kalki Lodge’s track after this continues in a similar vein. It consists of spacey layers of dark drones and keyboards accents and dark themes and small elements of incorporated industrialised percussion.
Keiji Haino’s background of instruments continues with some quieter dark drones, weird somewhat off-key avant-picking and weird improvised singing going weird. It is my least favourite track. Dödens Lammungar’s (Sweden) track is accompanied by slowed down dark electro weirdness, keeping its tempo behind, with deformed voice half singing in Swedish, with weird equally off-key electric guitars too. Fits with the previous track well, but it has a certain weird-making hypnotic effect. Shapeshifter (from Sweden too) adds more rhythms, also dark electro with pop/rock singing, directing towards underground clubs. The beginning of Martin Bladh’s track reminds me a bit of some of Art Zoyd’s ideas (Nosferatu’s bees). This one starts with a rhythmic collage of house flies wizzing sounds, then adds weird picking echoes like a Chinese gnome melody, weird low voice echoes and a lead spoken word, slightly deformed as well. Weird, dark but very descriptive, ending with the flies again that become like dark voices from a different shadow world.
Recommended. Expect more releases like this in future from the same label. More background information of the artists, lyrics and a few more old graphics from the book and a few weird photographs of the musicians can be found in the booklet.
