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1. obedience " The first full-length shows the band developing the esoteric theorems established on it's debut 7"
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JULIAN COPE : I’ll now conclude this month’s reviews with DESCENSION, the epic debut album by France’s Aluk Todolo, on Public Guilt Records (www.stickfiguredistro.com). For their playing unites Krautrock with Zeuhl via classic No Wave, and rocks mightily. Commencing like the soundtrack from some forgotten gulag escape movie, this power trio’s time-honoured guitar/bass/drums line-up is outstandingly meditative and un-clichéd. Once the album kicks deep in there, it’s as though these gentlemen are hypnotized and playing along while watching an animé interpretation of Ted Hughes’ Iron Man (now re-titled ‘The All New Adventures of Iron Man’ and in its third series replete with failed Scrappy Doo counterpart), and in this episode he’s fumigating the entire West Midlands conurbation with an all-purpose Heavy Rock deodorant/pesticide. Very Cleveland, very Can, very This Heat, very Magma, but very much its own original thing, and definitely another necessary part of the puzzle that leads us to the Rue d’Awakening. |
AQUARIUS :
Finally, the first full length from these mysterious French post black metal krautrock alchemists. And if you think calling a band French post black metal krautrock alchemists might be overdoing it, you haven't hear Aluk Todolo. An offshoot of black metal horde Diamatregon (who have one record on tUMULt, and another one coming soon), this trio, just guitar, bass and drums, are most definitely alchemists, working some sort of ancient magic, turning the simplest of rock band instrumentation, into something massive and mysterious, heavy and haunting, brutal and mesmerizing, repetitive and motorik. Crafting songs, that manage to be both pieces, in the classical sense, abstract and intellectual collections and arrangements of sound, subtle shadings, tonal color and timbre, harmony and dissonance, and SONGS, in the rock sense, fucking kick ass jams, that seem to go on forever, killer riffs, and relentless head nodding rhythms, like krautrock, only heavier and darker and way way blacker. Like black metal but without all the buzz and howl, stripped down to its very essence, to just mood and rhythm, ambience and propulsion. In the review of the previous 7" we described the band's sound as: Ominous krautrock rhythms over Einsterzende style industrial clatter, some lost seventies psych rock holy grail channeled through modern post rock. Dreamy and dark and mesmerizing. Hypnotic guitar lines and simple shuffling rhythms that build into clattery propulsive jams, all clanging angular riffs and dense tangled drumming. VERY This Heat like, and reminiscent of the late great Laddio Bolocko. Some sort of dangerous and mysterious postrock / krautrock hybrid, lo-fi but thick and dense and amazingly heavy. And the full length essentially still sounds like that, but having loosed themselves from the shackles of the way too brief 7" format, the band can take all those elements, and lay them out, an epic massive post rock, krautrock, dronerock, experimental post black metal sprawl. These are the kinds of songs and sounds that need space, and time, need to lull the listener in, to entrance, ensorcel, the rhythms are stripped down and repetitive, looped and hypnotic, simple, but surprisingly and subtly complex at the same time. It's not hard to hear other hypno rockers in Aluk Todolo's sound, Circle, Salvatore and the like, but also space rock masters of repetition, Hawkwind, The Heads, and of course krautrock legends Can and Faust. Especially Can, with their focus on the power of the rhythm, no mater how seemingly simple or plain. But more than anything, it's legendary UK experimentalists This Heat whose, haunting mysterious rhythmic influence is all over Descension. The opening track is the heaviest, a brutal slab of in the red distorted riffage, the actual riffs barely discernible, more like a heaving mass of crumbling distortion and space rock FX, but the rhythms that frame the whole record are already in place, pounding steadily beneath the buzz and skree. A head nodding pulse underpinning the swirling distorted clouds above. A bracing and white hot burst of blackdronekrautpsych that has the speakers rattling for all of its 8+ minutes. But that track mostly serves as an intro to the complex and moody rhythmic sprawl that makes up the other three tracks. "Burial Ground" begins with what sounds like a slowed down This Heat rhythm track synched up to the free abstract drift of legendary seventies dronepsych collective Taj Mahal Travellers. The drums unwavering, but the background constantly in flux, swaths of black buzz, brief flurries of chaotic FX, distant low end swells, haunting fragmented melodies, a gorgeous spare kraut rock jam dropped into the abyss. "Woodchurch" is a dense wall of high end buzz, all swirling distorted hum and keening feedback, tones all tangled up, a chordal wash of tuned vacuum cleaners, a sort of Sunroof! Style urdrone, but beneath it, the simplest of bass lines, distorted and downtuned, a heartbeat like throb, only a handful of notes, just enough to tie into the even simpler drum part, just kick drum and snare, a two step tattoo, as completely mesmerizing as it us utterly simple. The background buzz, swaying and pulsing, like some massive black sea, or clouds of insects ravaging a blighted sonic landscape. The disc closes with "Disease" which opens with an ultra heavy slide guitar, unfurling a slow motion blues riff, caked in black buzz and thick distortion, the notes left to hang, ringing out until the tones slowly transform into feedback, immediately being swallowed up by the riff right behind it. It's like Robert Johnson playing SUNNO))), and then suddenly, the sound shifts, and the band reverts to its murky trawl, a thick throbbing bass line, another Can like rhythm, guitars warm and warbly, more like a layer of wet fuzz than distinct riffing, but occasionally, bits of that opening salvo return, offering up brief blasts of speaker destroying crunch, or brief bits of grinding buzz, a sudden start that almost, but doesn't quite wake you from your soporific reverie. Near the end, the distorted slide guitar returns, and drums drop out, and the track finishes with a thick coda of pealing guitar roar and shimmering chordal droneŠ Intense and hypnotic and heavy and fucking genius. Ritualistic sounds, both black and brilliant, pulled from the void, a mysterious and sonic netherworld. Definite contender for record of the year. |
Article in Terrorizer
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MUSIQUEMACHINE : Descension is Aluk Todolo debut full length after a highly praised 7 inch and what a debut this is. For 37 minutes you tumbled through, get hypnotised and brutalised by this nightmarish, lo-fi , head-ripping and psychedelic black mind fuck. Taking in elements of black metal, krautrock, locked grooves, noise and black/ ritual psychedelics to summon up something that is truly of their own diabolic making- this feels like it could have been made by blood thirsty satanic hippies that have just crawled from a suffocating dark forest to play in front of you & scary the hell out of you. The music engulfs you in it's looped, smogy and sometimes seething presence, as the drums pound on and on as if played of human skin drums, bass and guitar get smudged, melted and smeared into each other. Like dark tripped out globules of sound that fall like strange enchanted entrails slipping from a vast black structure that stretches off over a blood red and black horizon as far as your eyes can see. This Apocalyptic ritual music for the end times, screw-up, nasty and bitter yet inviting and hypnotic. One hell of a musical death-trip into the beating black heart of this three piece. Truly music that threatens to swallow you all up leaving you in a limbo of Lovecafts around just your drums, bass and guitar sounding this strange, different and hellish. This is available in both cd form from public-guilt and on vinyl from riot-season. 4/5 Roger Batty |
SEAOFTRANQUILITY : I have to go song-by- song on this… 1. One thing is for sure about Descension…It quickly overwhelms your speakers with its lo-fidelity, industrial clamor. On the CD opener “Obedience”, I kept turning my stereo down so I could make some sense out of it all, but I am not sure I succeeded? It proved impossible to distinguish the harmonic interplay underneath the “hammer on sheet-metal” style production and aesthetic. I would call it: A sonic demonstration of clipped waveforms. 2. On “Burial Ground” there was much more air in the production; combined with the rather Nirvana like chord arpeggiation, it lent itself to a creepy texture that is complimented by some weird sound effects that sound something like a feedback laden, drippy faucet. Probably just harmonics, but at the 8 minute mark, I really didn’t care anymore. “Can somebody turn that damn faucet off?” 3. “Woodchurch” sounds amazingly like the last track?! The faucet has been tossed, but the distorted maelstrom is back. It has been placed over the rhythm of the last song with a constant buzzing effect that sounds like static rain. It just plods on and on….. 4. Is that a slide guitar? I think so? That is what kicks off the last song “Disease”. Then…it inexplicably changes into kind of a plodding groove with an ultra distorted, farting effect randomly appearing in and out of the mix? Kind of like industrial Jimi Hendrix. You dig? |
TAAKEFROST „With the goal to create a timeless, organic mixing of krautrock's strangeness and black metal's coldness […]." At least the publisher of yon sick tone-piece thinks this. If we can deal with it now, for some already seems to be clear, and for others still waits to be explored.Fact is, that Aluk Todolo aren't some of those ones, who one willingly invites to a pleasureful evening of music, at which one might get lost in the world of dreams. Therefore "Descension" simply sounds too experimental and confusing. Indeed initially dulcet ambient-tones stream towards one, but this illusion of atmospheric calmness isn't able to take a long lasting effect. Because abruptly, nearly befalling, the leaves turn and a chaotic noise-field of distortion and already perverse appearing notes-staging screamingly spreads over the ears of the listener. Yonder now first will jump up and dive for the loudness-controller for decreasing the volume fast as the wind – the Frenchmen know how their obscure tone-kind cuts wounds, how it may take influence. The basis-structure anyway is simply and explained quickly. As fundament we throughout have discrete drums, which steadily walk in a mystical manner, putting one foot before the other, as if they'd hide something. Then yon fundamental-rhythm is covered with absolutely sick and disturbed sound-elements, which consistently are created by guitar or bass. It rustles, noises, peeps and drags in the ears, like thousand needles hammering onto the eardrum with diminutive stabs. Thereby no real structure is to cognize. One arguably lives out an emotion, a certain expression, which seems to stand in the central light. By virtue of the very organic, thus neither artificially created nor digitally manipulated mass of noise and rhythm an unbelievable denseness accrues, one steadily leaves the listener in dubiety, makes it almost impossible, that the arising mood can be classified – so everyone willy-nilly is on one's own. Here of insanity marked ideas waft around, the aura of the four pieces sometimes is even frightening, confused pictures fizzle in front of the eyes, forget the definition of clear lines. And let this album be nor so terrible in the beginning, the point comes, at which a lot of things begin to make sense. But this isn't about grasp. Thus one needs a good dosage of endurance and time, for approaching to "Descension" just a little bit. And clear is that even there lies the problem: Aluk Todolo put the listener a mission, to which he, if we emanate from the average one, isn't equal. Too chaotic and intransparent the picture of sound presents, too strange and complex one designs a time-frame of almost forty minutes. So you have to bring along a certain penchant for suchlike. Conclusion: For the extremists of listening surely a delight as well as a trip into obscure, even hypnotic, and of occult intention embossed mind-conditions. Who though anyway has got problems with dealing with novel "structures" and first of all complexity and a certain noisiness, by far won't be able to get entrance to "Descension". (7.5/10) Frostkrieg |
SMOTHER : France's Aluk Todolo is bleak occult-driven metallic ambient nightmares forced through distorted and bizarre effects bent on deconstructing music as we have come to know it. Laced with elements of black metal and magic (with a 'k' even), "Descension" is a trip that not even a recreational drug addict would want to experiment with. Imagine all of the worst imaginable things in hell then marble it with a fascination for unpredictable chaos and minimalist psychedelics; you've got yourself one helluva weird post-black metal and post-rock album that is far removed from the typical stuff you've seen emanating from the underground metal scenes in all of Europe. |
HATEFULMETAL : Was die Franzosen von Aluk Todolo hier mit ihrem Debütalbum abgeliefert haben, ist so eigenartig wie zugleich interessant. Für diese Art von düsterer Musik gibt es keinen übergeordneten kategorischen Begriff, jedenfalls keinen, der mir geläufig ist. Aluk Todolo rekrutiert sich aus Leuten der französischen Black Metal-Gruppen Diamatregon und Vediog Svaor. Doch mit Black Metal hat Descension rein gar nichts zu tun. Die vier Instrumentaltitel zeugen viel mehr von verstörenden, beklemmenden und auch hypnotisch rituell arrangierten Klangkulissen. Das Spektrum, das dabei von Aluk Todolo abgedeckt wird, ist denkbar breit gefächert.
So gibt es sehr leise Passagen mit sehr sanften und leisen Melodien, wie etwa am Anfang vom ersten Titel Obedience. Dieser Anfang ist zunächst sehr ruhig aber hochgradig düster. Es sind neben den düsteren Klängen und Geräuschen sehr zaghaft angedeutete Gitarrenmelodien zu hören, bevor allmählich das Schlagzeug leise und eingängig einsetzt. Die Ausstrahlung die in dieser anfänglichen Phase von Obedience ausgeht, ist eine nahezu grenzenlos wirkende Trostlosigkeit und Endzeitstimmung. Doch statt dies zu vertiefen, kommt ein radikaler Schnitt und ohne wirkliche Vorankündigung wird es mit einem Schlag sehr laut und verstörend. Ganz plötzlich sind mit einem Mal schräge, grelle und disharmonisch arrangierte Gitarren zu hören, die rau und gemein klingen. Dazu ist das ruhige Schlagzeug in einem merkwürdigen Rhythmus zu hören und die verstörende Disharmonie der Gitarren wird zusätzlich von mechanischen Industrialgeräuschen verstärkt. Was im ersten Moment nach Krach klingt, verdichtet sich dann jedoch zu einer gleichförmigen und psychedelischen Klanglandschaft.Nicht weniger psychedelisch, dafür aber weitaus ruhiger, geht es mit Burial ground weiter. Hier bestimmt das eingängig gespielte Bass und schräge, sich verändernde Gitarrenmelodien das Klangbild. Der Bass und das Schlagzeug verändern sich nur minimal, dafür aber die Gitarren umso mehr. Nach etwa fünf Minuten, also genau in der Mitte des Liedes, kommen vereinzelte Hintergrundgeräusche hinzu, welche die bizarre Atmosphäre noch zusätzlich beflügeln.Woodchurch hingegen ist ein überaus eingängig strukturiertes Lied, in dem das Schlagzeug die gesamte Spielzeit über unverändert seinen langsamen Rhythmus spielt. Lediglich die Gitarren, die zum Teil extrem langsam und verzerrt gespielt werden, bringen etwas Veränderung ein.Zu guter letzt folgt mit Disease das abwechslungsreichste wie auch bizarrste Lied. Es enthält laute, verstörende und disharmonische Anteile wie sie Obedience zu hören waren aber auch sehr düstere und klare atmosphärische Passagen. An einer Stelle ist sogar kurzweilig eine Stimme zu hören, die weder spricht noch singt, sondern sehr speziell und bizarr klingt. Umsäumt wird diese Stimme von extrem verzerrten und kurz angestimmten Gitarrenriffs.Descension ist für mich ein großartiges Werk, das extrem, bizarr, beklemmend und düster ist. Auf eine Art ist es enorm rau und grell, auf eine andere Art aber auch stellenweise sehr harmonisch. Interessant dabei ist, soweit ich meinem Gehör vertrauen kann, dass Aluk Todolo fast alles mit Gitarren, Bass und Schlagzeug bewerkstelligt hat. Angesichts mancher Passagen, die laut und verstörend sind und in ihrer extremen Beschaffenheit eher nach Industrial oder Noise klingen, schon bemerkenswert. Mir gefällt Descension jedenfalls verdammt gut, da es bizarre und überaus düstere Musik ist, die eine sehr negative Ausstrahlung hat. Aceust |
THEONETRUEDEADANGEL : "The band's debut single, released last year (or was it early this year? I forget -- it was a while ago, at any rate) by Public Guilt's vinyl-only imprint Implied Sound, met with a highly favorable reception (as well it should have, since prog-influenced occult black metal bands that are actually good don't exactly grow on trees), but that single's hypnotic sound was only a small foretaste of the madness that springs forth in full bloom on this, the band's first full-length release. Combining ritual music, occult theology, black metal, early industrial stylings, noise, and willfully bent prog-rock, what emerges here across four long, hypnotic tracks is seriously strange stuff. This is what they really mean by psychedelic music -- strange, alien, exercises in occult hypnotism designed to open up your third eye and fill it with tripped-out scenes from the black metal dreamhouse. Simple but mesmerizing beats construct the foundation over which they lay equal measures of industrial clatter, obscure noises, pure unalloyed dissonance, and an ever-evolving palette of textures that encompass everything from trebly processed faux-keyboard stylings to pure screeching noise. Cold, alien and otherworldly like the best black metal, but far more avant garde and heavily influenced by psychedelic music and Krautrock, this sounds like the musical application of ideas fostered by the likes of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osmond Spare -- in other words, ritual music for the practice of chaos magick. You don't have to be steeped in occultism to appreciate this as an engaging work of art, though; their musicial vision is strong (and original) enough to stand apart from the theological implications of their work. Mystical and revelatory, but not exactly for the faint of heart or those hoping for shiny happy poptunes." |
review in THE WIRE
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LEFTHIP : Aluk Todolo, a French band featuring members of Diametregon and Vediog Svaor, has a heavy occult ritual theme and a sound that defies description. Combining elements of black metal, krautrock, 70's epic psyche jams and even classic industrial bands like Einsutrzende Neubaten, the band synthesizes these influences into a distinct and refreshing new sound on Descension. Relentless, creepy, and powerful, the group alternates between slow unnerving jams that sound like black magic ritual invocations and pounding bursts of intense fury. Then too there's the ominous, plodding bits that sound like the band are really up to no good on the black arts front. They'll switch vibes from song to song and sometimes in the middle of a track - don't turn your stereo up too loud when you hear the relaxed sonuds of the album opener, "Obedience" or you'll be in for a nasty scare when the group kicks into overdrive. Is the album title, Descension, appropriate? I don't know, it's uplifting to hear something that sounds so totally new and awesome. It comes packaged in strangely appropriate artwork that's a mix between occult imagery and experimental cinema. Aluk Todolo.... I hope these crazy French bastards don't get themselves in any trouble with their occult rituals - I'd like to see this band continue for at least long enough to maybe put out a few more records and tour North America. Brilliant! ne |
LORDSOFMETAL : I never thought that a CD would go on my nerves so easily. I am as broad as a rhino bitches ass concerning musical taste, but I hardly was able to give this CD a second listen. The French band Aluk Tolodo is a bit too much on a sunny but cold afternoon to listen to, really. Aluk Tolodo pours out pure concrete in a fat, misty lo-fi instrumental mix of nihilistic repetitive music, juiced up with industrial noises like Einsturzende Neubauten, mixed with a twist of German krautrock weirdness and the cold steep and empty over the top sound of black metal. With instruments that sound out of tune they explore the auditive boundaries of the human mind, and that's a scary trip. The CD is mastered by the infamous James Plotkin, so if you are looking for references, try his projects and bands. The second song 'Burial Ground' is by far my favourite, repetitive but loads of strangeness going on. But it actually describes the CD : simple basics, once or twice exploding into the true meaning of decibels, loads of sounds draped all over it and a weirdness cherry on top. Aluk Tolodo is just fucking weird. Some hail them as the newest innovation, some hate their guts (because that's where the music stirs big time). Me? I just choose the path in between and remind me of the days that music was plain and simple… Erik |
STEREOINVADERS :La domanda che mi sono fatto appena terminato l'ascolto di "Descension" è stata la seguente: "e come ca .. xxo faccio a descrivere 'sta roba??!". La bio assegna il combo francese alla categoria generica del metal; assai più puntuali e diligenti gli stessi Aluk Todolo che sul proprio MySpace si definiscono "religious /psychedelic /trance".Va da sé che con questo tipo di band le informazioni stanno a zero, anzi, lo status di cultismo tenebroso impone l'assoluto riserbo. So che i transalpini (che ricordiamolo, sono arrivati secondi alla ultima finale di Coppa del Mondo!) sono in totale tre, che la loro musica è interamente strumentale, che la cosiddetta "forma-canzone" è l'ultima delle loro preoccupazioni all'interno dei 37 minuti circa di "Descension" (per un totale di 4 tracce), e che all'attivo hanno già un 7'' ben accolto dalla critica specializzata. La loro ricerca sonora verte su tematiche magiche, esoteriche, spiritualistiche, occultistiche, eccetera, eccetera. Il loro profilo MySpace abbonda dei vari Crowley, Meyrink, Rasputin, Madame Blavatsky e compagnia massonica cantante. L'approccio al pentagramma (termine quanto mai avventuroso nel caso degli Aluk Todolo) è filtrato attraverso l'improvvisazione, la produzione volutamente lo-fi, strutture e sonorità artatamente ruvide, acide, dissonanti, impenetrabili, ripetizioni ipnotiche ed ossessive, oscurità morbosa e ritualismo monolitico ancorché minimalista. La line-up annovera addirittura membri delle cult underground black metal band tUMULt e Paragon International (... eh, addirittura!) e il mastering è stato affidato a James Plotkin (Sunn O). L'album è edito anche in versione limitata su vinile. A quanto detto sin qui si può aggiungere una certa componente industrial e kraut rock sperimentale (tralasciando qua e là la stilizzazione di svastiche nell'artwork del CD ....). Non nego che un tale lavoro non emani un certo fascino perverso; a tratti pareva di essere nel bel mezzo della scena di Poltergeist in cui Carol Anne viene rapita dagli spiriti demoniaci! Altre volte in balia di un carburaturista ubriaco della Wehrmacht. Mi preme sottolineare per chi legge quanto un prodotto del genere sia "estremo" e radicale, e dunque non adatto a tutti i palati. Se volete aprire le porte della percezione ..... |
THEAJNAOFFENSIVE : After the incredibly impressive proggy, '70s styled occult rock comes their first full length. 4 tracks in the same vein although this time fused with more of a dirty, modern BM recording sound, a bit more experimentation with the guitar and a great fucking layout. I can't really recommend this one enough. |
BLACKTERRORMETAL : Dalla Francia, il paese se vogliamo più all'avanguardia del momento, in ambito estremo, arriva un'altra entità che colpisce. Aluk Todolo è un progetto parallelo a realtà che in passato si erano fatte notare nell'underground, ma oggi sostanzialmente sconosciute a quasi tutti, mi riferisco a Diamatregon e Vediog Svaor, che la Public Guilt definisce "leggendarie", dimostrando la propria ignoranza nei riguardi della scena black metal. Aluk Todolo in effetti musicalmente è un entità difficile da definire. Si sente che si tratta di musicisti nati nel black metal e questo genere musicale influenza direttamente la musica di questi ragazzi, totalmente strumentale. Però, più che metal, lo definirei ambient / noise esoterico e visionario. Un caos organizzato in cui l'utilizzo degli strumenti tradizionali è ben radicato, ci sono rumori elettronici, ma in gran parte non sono simulati da sintetizzatore. Sono elementi veri e palpabili. Sembra di tornare indietro alla improvvisazione psichedelica degli anni settanta, specie per l'incisività della sezione ritmica. Le chitarre disarmoniche producono dei suoni che ci riportano ai rumori moderni: con "Obedience" sembra di stare in mezzo al traffico di una grande metropoli; "Woodchorch", invece richiama ad una notte in mezzo ad una foresta, e così via… Pur non trattandosi di black metal, è una musica che è molto vicina a questo genere e non solo per le emozioni oscure che rievoca, ma anche nel suono ricorda molte realtà più vicine all'atmosfera ed al rumorismo come Todesstoß ad esempio. "Burial Ground" potrebbe essere un pezzo dell'artista appena citato, mancano solo le sue urla lancinanti."Descension" è un disco affascinante, un viaggio in cui inoltrarsi pur trattandosi di musica totalmente sperimentale, perché fondamentalmente è di difficile assimilazione soltanto se non si è vicini al mondo del black metal. Per noi è molto più facile. |
ONDAROCK : Un 7" già all'attivo, per questo combo francese che, evitandoci preoccupazioni e rompicapi, ha definito la sua musica con la triade religious-psychedelic-trance. Ci era già noto il loro interesse per occultismo, magia e cosine del genere, ma oggi, con questa prima prova sulla lunga distanza a nome "Descension", la discesa (per l'appunto) nelle tenebre è davvero cosa fatta. Andiamo a braccetto, dunque, on muri sonori impenetrabili, ripetizioni sfiancanti e black holes ricolmi di distorsioni ("Obedience"). L'effetto-trance è assicurato, soprattutto quando l'andatura si fa ipnotica e drogata, con stormi di uccelli elettrici in fiamme ("Burial Ground"); ma, come dire?, in fin dei conti è roba che, appena te ne stai lì a rifletterci un attimo a mente fredda, suona un pochino pretenziosa, priva di un reale baricentro, di una vera e propria direzione (dopotutto, "Burial Ground" dura dieci-minuti-dieci, e non c'è granché da sviscerare, se non qualche sciocchezzuola finto-elettronica). E se si fanno, come sono stati fatti, i nomi di Can, This Heat e Magma (evidenziando, quindi, un retroterra krauto che se la spassa con l'ossessione zeuhl), di certo si converrà che, al massimo, si tratta di mete eventuali, santini cui ci si rivolge senza il dovuto rispetto (tanto che, ad esempio, "Woodchurch" può dilatare, senza battere ciglio e per altri nove (!) minuti, la marcia inesorabile e funerea di "Burial Ground"). E quando proprio senti di non farcela, ecco arrivare una leggermente più cadenzata "Disease", che, grazie all'atmosfera fumosa, alle sterzate in andirivieni di metallo stridente e alla comparsata di uno zombie improvvisatosi vocalist, ci restituisce un po' di buon umore. La baracca non sarà salva, ma almeno qualche piccola speranza per il futuro c'è ancora. |
IDEALNO&PRAGMATIČNO : Ako ste se kojim slučajem zapitali da li se nemački doprinos antologiji savremene muzike tretira sa poštovanjem u recentnoj muzičkoj produkciji s onu stranu šou biznisa, preslušavanjem dugosvirajućeg prvenca francuske trupe Aluk Todolo dobijate nedvosmisleno potvrdan odgovor. Četiri intenzivne instrumentalne meditacije započinju neprijatnim kaskadama „bele buke" u najboljoj tradiciji ranih Einsturzende Neubauten, kada se ova grupa iz Berlina narugivala sviračkim konvencijama koristeći motorne testere i slična pomagala umesto uobičajenog instrumentarijuma radi dočaravanja svoje tragične vizije života u civilizaciji. U slučaju Aluk Todolo, čini se da je ovaj uvod vid svojevrsne inicijacije u njihov mikrokosmos po principu „ko preživi pričaće". Zatim sledi ono zbog čega je ovaj album u samom vrhu ovogodišnje svetske produkcije a to se može definisati jednom rečju – Kraut. Arogantni Englezi iskoristili su ovu nemačku reč za kupus kako bi označili tevtonske napore u rušenju sviračkih barijera ka onostranom krajem šezdesetih i tokom sedamdesetih – najočitije u radovima velikana kao što su Can, Amon Duul II, Faust ili Neu!, pa čak i Kraftwerk (sve je to jedna ista priča)... Njihov uticaj na opštu krvnu sliku savremene muzike nije odmah bio očigledan ali post-rock eksplozija početkom devedesetih čiji ugarci i dalje žežu po ognjištima elektrifikovanih nomada približila je ovaj „podzemni" fenomen rok muzike i mladjim naraštajima. I gde su Aluk Todolo u ovoj priči? Pa jednostavno, Francuzi sviraju Kraut za 21. vek. Polazeći od radova učitelja, oni vrše tranziciju žanra ka do sad nečuvenom, u hipnotičkom ritmu slikajući očima do sad nevidjene predele. Obrisi blek metal zlokobnosti u atmosferi ploče potcrtavaju magijsku komponentu improvizacije – pošto momci svirku tretiraju kao obred, koje inače izvode u šumi – a i sami sebe definišu kao occult rock. Nadamo se da im se neće nešto nepredviđeno desiti jer se ovakvi albumi ne snimaju svaki dan. Briljantno. |
CREATIVEECLIPSE : Nach der obskuren, wie grossartigen ersten EP auf Public Guilt, folgt nun das erste Album der Franzosen, die sich den okkulten Kräften von musikalischer Trance verschrieben haben. Aluk Todolo sind dabei eine extrem interessante Band, schaffen sie es doch, diesen esoterischen Touch, welcher der gesamten Band- Konzeption unterliegt, musikalisch mit einer Mischung von Krautrock Einflüssen und Black Metal- artiger Kälte zu vermengen. Schnelle, zwanghafte Rhythmen, herrlich tiefgründige, disharmonische Gitarren, unterschwellige Vibrationen und komische magische Beschwörungen... all das macht Aluk Todolo aus. Die Produktion klingt archaisch, rauh und rostig. Eigentlich dermassen lo-fi, dass einem ganz Bange wird. Lo-fi, aber trotzdem dicht, eng gedrängt und so zerfahren und schwer. Aluk Todolo sind unvorhersehbar, unberechenbar und auf ihre Weise so unkompliziert minimalisiert-hypnotisch und psychedelisch. Dieses psychedelische Moment wird einzig und allein durch eine heruntergeschraubte, fast blechern erscheinende Instrumentierung geschaffen. Das hat fast schon wieder etwas Industrial-artiges. Aluk Todolo klingen gefährlich, klingen mysteriös und dunkel. Die Gitarrenjams, der simple, schleifende und schleppende Rhythmus wirken träumerisch und entfremdet. Das Artwork ist ähnlich bizarr und voller seltsamer Abbildungen. 9/10 |
BOOMKAT : Occult noise mavens Aluk Todolo turn loose this ghoulish set of pseudo-black metal cacophonies for the Riot Season label, guaranteed to be about twenty times harsher than your standard genre emission by merit of its James Plotkin mastering job. As usual, it sounds as though Plotkin's got his favourite distortion unit involved, saturating the track to the point of fizzing overload and giving the guitars a good mauling. The drum sound is obscenely lo-fi, sounding like someone assembling flatpack furniture two doors down. The band's brand of instrumental metal clears up occasionally to reveal webs of disharmonious string clamour, only to ultimately return to its noise blizzard default setting. Oh yeah, it's also worth pointing out that this album was recorded "in the Elder's Cave". Sweet. |
review in ROCK A ROLLA
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ARTROCK : Wydana cztery tygodnie temu płytka przyszła wprost ze Stanów od małej wytwórni Public Guilt z Baltimore. Poza formacją Aluk Todolo wydała albumy takich artystów jak Psychic Paramount, Destructo Swarmnots, Cream Abdul Babar, czy Magicicada. Czym jest Aluk Todolo? To formacja trójki francuskich muzyków związanych z podziemną sceną black metalową – zarówno francuską jak i amerykańską (Diamatregon, Viedog Svaor). Album Descension jest z kolei pierwszym pełnometrażowym wydawnictwem, wcześniej ukazał się tylko singiel na siedmiocalowym winylu (debut). Formacja zaliczana jest do kręgów okultystycznych, co ma swoje odzwierciedlenie i w logo zespołu i w wizualizacji strony (zarówno www jak i myspace). Przejdźmy jednak do muzyki.Cztery dłuższe utwory, prawie trzy kwadranse z… okultystyczną magią i modlitewnym transem. Ale też z potężną dawka psychodelii, krautrocka, black metalowych oparów. Bardzo dobrze nagrana płyta, bardzo wyraźna mimo kilkukrotnie pojawiających się ścian dźwięków. Obedience rozpoczyna się minimalistycznymi dawkami wysublimowanych dźwięków, osadzonych w spokojnym industrialnym rytmie. Tylko po to, by tuż po drugiej minucie uderzyć w nas z całą gwałtownością black metalowej starej szkoły. Potężne chaotyczne gitary, psychiatryczna perkusja. Do końca przygniata nas monolityczna ekspresja, zupełnie jak w nagraniach japońskiego MONO (może nawet bardziej Tsurubami) czy kanadyjskiej NADJI. Transcendencja? Zdecydowanie tak, odpływamy w zupełnie inny świat. Nagle przekraczamy bramę. Wchodzimy do Burial Ground. To swoiste przywitanie z otaczającym nas światem, po drugiej stronie (burial ground oznacza cmentarz). Spokojny rytm perkusji, monolityczny, jednostajny. Do tego przedziwnie brzmiąca gitara oraz trzymający nas na właściwej drodze bas. Zupełnie jakbym schodził w głąb Hadesu, wraz ze znikającymi za mną schodami. W tym utworze słychać minimalizm i dużą partię dysharmonicznych gitarowych pasaży. Pojawiają się także magiczne zjawy, których powinniśmy się raczej wystrzegać, chyba, że uda nam się je okiełznać. Ale w połowie doganiają nas upiory z życia doczesnego, pojawiają się reminiscencje do płyty Umma Gumma. Udaje nam się złapać nić łączącą z poprzednim życiem. Nić, która w tempie bardzo, bardzo zwolnionego metronomu utrzymuje nasz puls na możliwym do przeżycia poziomie. Jest nam to potrzebne, bowiem weszliśmy do Drewnianego Kościoła (Woodchurch), a w zasadzie do kościoła znajdującego się w środku wielkiego drewnianego lasu. Powinienem dodać drewnianego, martwego lasu. Kościół tej jednak żyje własnym życiem. Niczym Drzewa Olbrzymy z opowieści Tolkiena, zatrzymał nas, nie pozwalając iść dalej. Co więcej, zmieniając swój kształt każe nam się dostosować, przygniata nas do swojej drewnianej podłogi, jednocześnie coraz bardziej rozciągając się na wysokość. Tylko, czemu mam wrażenie, że to nie sufit idzie w górę, tylko podłoga wokół mnie spada coraz to głębiej i głębiej środka ziemi? Disease to jedyny utwór udostępniony w wersji promocyjnej (do pobrania ze strony WWW) Disease to choroba. Z tą chorobą mogę jednak udać się tylko do psychiatry. Paranoiczne, psychodeliczne, upiorne gitary. Chorobliwie brzmiąca perkusja i ten bas powodujący dziwne wibracje w centralnym ośrodku mózgowym. Zdecydowanie zostałem zahipnotyzowany. Zaś muzyka kojarzy mi się wyłącznie ze starym krautrockiem i psychodelicznymi zespołami z przełomu lat sześćdziesiątych i siedemdziesiątych ubiegłego stulecia. Bardzo mocna z rodzimym SBB i gitarami Antymosa. Dodatkowo pojawiają się głosy, jakby mantry.Bardzo interesujący album. Co ciekawe muzycy celem uzyskania odpowiedniego brzmienia całość nagrali w skali lo-fi, żadne tam 5.1 i inne bzdety. Celowe obniżenie możliwości studia celem zachowania klarowności nagrań, przyniosło bardzo ciekawe, muzyczne efekty. 8/10 Anorak |
VOENGER Die Franzosen bieten auf dieser Scheibe reine Instrumentalstücke an. Sie selbst bezeichnen es als eine Mischung von Krautrock (dessen Fremdartigkeit) und Black Metal (dessen Kälte). Zumindest aus letzterem Genre sollten Erfahrungen bestehen, spielen die Mitglieder doch in Bands wie Diamatregon und Vediog Svaor. Wie auch immer, mit melodischem Metal hat dies sicherlich nichts zu tun. Aluk Todolo sind verstörende Klänge, die völlige Disharmonien aufzeigen aber den Hörer, zumindest mich, auch irgendwie fesseln. Die Stücke sind etwa zehn Minuten lang und beinhalten größtenteils nur langsames Schlagwerk und Gitarre. Das erste Lied 'Obedience' beginnt mit einem leisen und sonoren Hintergrundrauschen begleitet von einem dumpfen Schlagzeug und geht nach zwei Minuten sofort in die kalte und harte Klangwelt von Aluk Todolo über. Nachdem man in diesem 'Krach' (verzerrte Gitarre, monotones Schlagzeug) dann doch eine gewisse Struktur gefunden hat, fängt die Musik an einen in den Bann zu ziehen. Dieses Spiel wird über die restlichen sechs Minuten mit kleineren Variationen durchgehalten. Danach folgt 'Burial Ground', was schon ein wenig ruhiger und strukturierter daherkommt. Beständig erklingt der seichte Baß im Hintergrund und das Schlagzeug setzt wenig Akzente. Hier dominieren die Variation der Gitarrenmalträtierung und die Verwendung von verschiedenartigen, meist verstört-subtil klingenden, Klangeinsprengseln. Das ganze wirkt sehr kalt und technisch und im Unterschied dazu wirkt der ruhige dunkle Baß als Gegenstück. Gut passen würde diese Musik als Gänsehautgarant in einem Horrorfilm à la 'Ring'. Ähnlich verhält es sich in 'Woodchurch' - auch hier spielt das Schlagzeug monoton seine Melodie und die schrille Gitarre gibt den Weg vor. Das letzte Stück 'Disease' beginnt mit einer Melodie, die mich ein wenig an einen Western erinnert. Nur durch verzerrte Gitarren vorgetragen ist es vergleichsweise melodiös. Nach 90 Sekunden endet es abrupt und es setzt wieder das monotone Spiel von Baß/Schlagzeug ein. Unterbrochen wird es nur durch Gitarrenfetzen die den psychedelisch wirkenden Rhythmus zerstören. In diesem Stück gibt es sogar so etwas wie einen kurzen Gesang. Aluk Todolo ist kein Metal. Die Musik ist krank, verstört, eintönig und vielleicht gerade deshalb so interessant. Am ehesten werden sich wohl Freunde des Noise/Doom mit der Musik anfreunden können. Dies wird wohl auch daran liegen, daß hier James Plotkin (Khanate) mit am Mischpult saß. Laut Booklet sind hier nur ein Baß, eine Gitarre und ein Schlagzeug am Werk. Um so interessanter, wenn die eingespielten 'Effekte' alle damit erzeugt wären. Wehrmut am 16.12.2007 |
PLASTELIN Ako ste se kojim slučajem zapitali da li se nemački doprinos antologiji savremene muzike tretira sa poštovanjem u recentnoj muzičkoj produkciji s onu stranu šou biznisa, preslušavanjem dugosvirajućeg prvenca francuske trupe Aluk Todolo dobijate nedvosmisleno potvrdan odgovor. Četiri intenzivne instrumentalne meditacije započinju neprijatnim kaskadama "bele buke" u najboljoj tradiciji ranih Einsturzende Neubauten, kada se ova grupa iz Berlina narugivala sviračkim konvencijama koristeći motorne testere i slična pomagala umesto uobičajenog instrumentarijuma radi dočaravanja svoje tragične vizije života u civilizaciji. U slučaju Aluk Todolo, čini se da je ovaj uvod vid svojevrsne inicijacije u njihov mikrokosmos po principu "ko preživi pričaće". Zatim sledi ono zbog čega je ovaj album u samom vrhu ovogodišnje svetske produkcije a to se može definisati jednom rečju - Kraut. Arogantni Englezi iskoristili su ovu nemačku reč za kupus kako bi označili tevtonske napore u rušenju sviračkih barijera ka onostranom krajem šezdesetih i tokom sedamdesetih - najočitije u radovima velikana kao što su Can, Amon Duul II, Faust ili Neu!, pa čak i Kraftwerk (sve je to jedna ista priča)... Njihov uticaj na opštu krvnu sliku savremene muzike nije odmah bio očigledan ali post-rock eksplozija početkom devedesetih čiji ugarci i dalje žežu po ognjištima elektrifikovanih nomada približila je ovaj "podzemni" fenomen rok muzike i mladjim naraštajima. I gde su Aluk Todolo u ovoj priči? Pa jednostavno, Francuzi sviraju Kraut za 21. vek. Polazeći od radova učitelja, oni vrše tranziciju žanra ka do sad nečuvenom, u hipnotičkom ritmu slikajući očima do sad nevidjene predele. Obrisi blek metal zlokobnosti u atmosferi ploče potcrtavaju magijsku komponentu improvizacije - pošto momci svirku tretiraju kao obred, koje inače izvode u šumi - a i sami sebe definišu kao occult rock. Nadamo se da im se neće nešto nepredviđeno desiti jer se ovakvi albumi ne snimaju svaki dan. Briljantno. Autor: Marko Nikolić |
VS-WEBZINE : Tout juste un an après la sortie de leur premier 7"EP auto-intitulé dont je vous avais parlé à l'époque le groupe est de retour avec "Descension" son premier album qui sort sur le label américain Public Guilt en version CD et sur Riot Season en version vinyl. Pour ceux qui n'auraient pas tout suivi, je rappellerai que ALUK TODOLO est un groupe français comportant en son sein des membres de DIAMATREGON et VEDIOG SVAOR mais que musicalement ce projet n'a qu'un rapport très lointain avec le métal.Se situant dans la continuité du EP, "Descension" propose 4 titres pour 37 minutes de musique. Les titres sont donc relativement longs et proposent une musique toujours aussi difficilement classable que les membres du groupe appellent Occult Rock. On navigue toujours entre musique psychédélique très typée seventies (notamment le PINK FLOYD des débuts sur le titre "Burial Ground"), krautrock (un rock expérimental pratiqué en Allemagne durant les 70's), musique rituelle voire black metal pour le côté sombre. L'ensemble ne comporte quasiment aucune voix et est donc exclusivement instrumental et toujours basé sur l'utilisation exclusive de la basse, de la batterie et de la guitare.En un an, la musique du groupe a relativement évolué. l'album est beaucoup plus sombre, beaucoup plus rituel et les titres sont beaucoup moins construits plus instinctifs, sans doute le fruit d'improvisations (peut-être sous l'emprise de substances hallucinogènes). On pourrait donc dire que ALUK TODOLO joue de la musique rituelle avec des instruments rock traditionnels.La production est toujours aussi primitive et lo-fi, le son de guitare est épais, distordu, crasseux et la section rythmique totalement hypnotique. Bref un OVNI musical (un OMNI donc) des plus excellents mais à ne pas mettre entre toutes les oreilles.Sheb.17/20 |
THEDAILYMURK : This French band plays what they like to call “Occult Rock”...What I hear on this CD is a Can-like groove grafted onto an animated corpse. The music conjures an image of this corpse (who spent a good part of the evening digging itself out of the cold ground) praying to a cartoon drawing of Aleister Crowley sleeping in an Opium den. The whole thing just reeks of haunted houses and ancient tomes, but damn it grooves like a Krautrockin’ mutha! Julian Cope described this release as “very Cleveland, very Can, very This Heat, very Magma”...I love how Mr. Cope always takes a moment to mention Cleveland in his reviews...He is right there is something oddly Cleveland about this CD. There are boarded up homes, desperation and grit couched in these dark mystical grooves...Yeah, I am going to far - The release is very good, very out there and it is easy to make it a part of your being... |
Review in LOUD magazine (Portugal)
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OX-MAGAZINE : Seine Band nach einem Ahnenkult, also einer Art Religion zu benennen, die bis heute auf der zu Indonesien gehörenden Insel Sulawesi praktiziert wird, kann man sicherlich nach außen als Produkt ungeheuren Wissens verkaufen, aber wahrscheinlicher ist doch, dass das in den Ohren des Täufers einfach cool klang. In der Musik der Franzosen ALUK TODOLO lassen sich jedenfalls weder irgendwelche religiösen Motive noch indonesisches Liedgut finden (man verzeihe mir mein Pauschalisieren der diversen dort lebenden Völker in Sachen Folklore sowie den furchtbar an den Haaren herbeigezogenen Einstieg in dieses Review). Das aus den französischen Black Metal-Bands DIAMATREGON und VERDIOG SVAOR hervorgegangene Trio hat wohl vielmehr in den Plattenkisten der Eltern und älteren Geschwister gestöbert und unter dem Einfluss des dort Gefundenen eine Musik kreiert, die sich aus viel Krautrock und ein wenig frühem Industrial zusammensetzt. An Black Metal erinnert auf ALUK TODOLOs Debütalbum allein die düstere Grundstimmung der vier rein instrumentalen, alle um die zehn Minuten langen Songs und vielleicht noch der eine oder andere etwas heftigere Moment. Da solche aber selten sind, ist "Descension" trotz einer vorherrschenden Disharmonie eine meditative, beinahe einlullende Angelegenheit. (7) (Andre Bohnensack) |
ORGANMAGAZINE : You know that paranoid feeling when your washing machine switches from over-baring violent noise to a sinister threat in the dark corner? No, maybe something less mechanical and a little more organic than an off hinge killer washing machine in the dark? Organic clanging out there in the burial grounds? Metal leaves moving in the mechanical wind? A saucer full of clanking buzzing humming menacing secrets? Disease in a wooden church? Menacing instrumental pieces that kind of soothe and hypnotise once you give in to whatever’s out there. |
DECIBLOG : Aluk Todolo is a French band that features members of Diametregon. The group’s Descension was lost in the shuffle in ‘07, but it definitely deserves your attention. With one important caveat: you must dig Einsturzende Neubauten. But I’m definitely in favor of black metal dudes who are willing to embrace mechanical sounds, and since black metal is already this close to krautrock, it’s really not such a huge leap of faith to go all-out industrial. |
TRAKMARX : Following a hefty bout of ‘summoning up dark forces’, Grenoble’s stalwart BMers, Diamatregon, have collaborated with fellow Gallic disciples of The Black, Vediog Svaor, to raise the spectre that is revered as Aluk Todolo. Named after Indonesia’s indigenous religion, Aluk Todolo roughly translates as ‘the way of the ancestors’, which is the particular shining path this inventive & largely spontaneous trio have elected to follow. Recorded in a cave in the Alps over the summer of 2006 after ‘extensive ritual ingestion’, Aluk Todolo’s debut long player, ‘Descension’, features 4-porky prime cuts of esoterica-inspired instrumental eccentricity that veers from the Blackness of Burzum & Striborg, leftwards, across the dual carriageway signposted ‘UK post-punk circa 1982′, before parking up for the night in a kruatrockian lay-by to slip into a substance induced trance! Aluk Todolo claim they have no idea where their music comes from - or where it’s going to - & even after several intense sessions with ‘Descension’, I must admit, I’d have to agree with them. Side 1 of ‘Descension’ opens with ‘Obedience’, a gargantuan slab of BM inspired organic psychedelia that rumbles ominously and relentlessly towards its apocalyptic finale, bombarded by all manner of disharmonic fret-board pyrotechnics and abstract noise as she goes. A subdued, post-punky guitar figure shapes ‘Burial Ground’, interspersed with the sound of giant insects arguing about who gets to go first on a decaying corpse over a minimal metronomic beat. Quark, strangeness & charm, indeed! Side 2 gets off to a strident start with the insistent ‘Woodchurch’, a feedback drenched exercise in stating the ‘bleeding obviously fantastic’ over & over again, ad infinatum. A flurry of fuzzed-up slide guitar introduces ‘Disease’, before we slip into a narcotic informed coma haunted by disembodied voices and stabs of untreated noise. So, there we have it: ‘Descension’: 37-minutes of endlessly evocative discipline steeped in magik ritual & invocation. Jean Encoule - tMx bloG - January 15th, 2008 |
POPMATTERS : France’s Aluk Todolo earned significant praise on the back of their debut seven-inch, so much so that they had no problem finding international distribution for their first full-length. Like the seven-inch, Descension is a thorough exploration of the crossroads between scratchy, arcane Krautrock and black metal noise. The opening “Obedience” starts with a dense but distant industrial atmosphere and drums that slowly pick up steam. Then something that sounds like a train runs the atmosphere over and continues to run it over for the remaining six minutes of the track, during which the layers of screaming whistles and the rackety drums remain basically unchanged. The following “Burial Ground” is a lot easier on the ears. There, a slacker drum pattern and bass progression solemnly support drifting fogs of whispering devils and a brutally tortured guitar that phases in and out of time for the entirety of its ten minutes. Granted, it sounds like they’ve got some good ideas for a minute or two, but they pad them out to ridiculous lengths and don’t end up really going anywhere with them. They need to learn the lessons of succinctness and/or progression, but it is their debut album, so time is on their side. |
LES ACTEURS DE L'OMBRE : Dès le titre d'ouverture « Obedience », je me dis que la chronique de ce Descension ne va pas être une sinécure. Shooté à la langueur d'une morphine psychédélique qui vous plonge dans un trip ambient minimaliste à peine perturbé par une batterie amorphe, on est soudain tiré traîtreusement de cette rêverie noire et cotonneuse au bout de deux minutes par de brefs hurlements de yôkais digne d'un film d'horreur japonais. Et là, c'est le putain de cauchemar ! Enfin, je sais pas exactement ce que c'est, mais ça donne plus du tout envie de dormir, en tout cas. Comme si trois hommes avaient décidé de s'évader de leur caverne pour taper un boeuf spectral et jammer sauvagement dans un réacteur d'Airbus A666 en vous passant les oreilles à tabac avec, euh, j'hésite entre de la musique et du bruit ? Non en fait, on dirait Masami Akita qui joue du rock'n'roll avec une réverbe à la Red harvest. Qu'est-ce que je disais moi, déjà, à propos de sinécure ? Bref, le responsable de mes futurs maux de tête est français, s'appelle « Aluk todolo », en est à son deuxième coup d'essai, et cultive en matière de communication ce flou médiatique dont aiment s'entourer les acteurs les plus mystérieux de notre underground black metal à nous, auréolés ces dernières années d'une réputation ténébreuse qui les précèdent de plus en plus à l'étranger, où chacune de leurs nouvelles créations est accueillie avec cette glorieuse impatience que seule la perspective d'écouter des trucs incompréhensibles mais cool, peut susciter. Tout au plus sait-on que ce trio de l'ombre compte en son sein des membres de Diamatregon et Vediog svaor. Euh pardon, des « légendaires Diamatregon et Vediog svaor », s'il vous plaît, dixit la biographie, messieurs dames. Bon d'accord, « Blasphemy for Satan » arracherait les cornes du grand cornu lui même et « In the distance » était sympathiquement barré, mais de là à estampiller tout ça du sceau de la légende, c'est aller un peu vite en besogne promotionnelle tout de même, non ? Visiblement non, puisque le label remet un petit coup de cirage marketing en nous citant entre autres une chronique de la première parution d'Aluk tolodo par les américains éclairés d'Aquarius records, qui grands amateurs de bizarreries sonores devant l'éternel, ne tarissent bien sûr pas d'éloges devant cet O.M.N.I (au cas où : néologisme sûrement utilisé par d'autres avant moi pour désigner un « objet musical non identifié ».) qu'ils ont du kiffer grave. En même temps c'est un peu facile ça, les mecs d'Aquarius records adorent tout ce qui est bizarre et français...et euh, aussi tout ce qui est black metal. Enfin tout ce qui est black metal français bizarre, plutôt. La précision a son importance, sinon on pourrait croire qu'ils adorent Brigitte Fontaine, par exemple. Quoique, connaissant ces types-là, ils seraient aussi fichus d'adorer cet étrange personnage, inénarrable croisement gothico-sénescent entre Madame de Fontenay et Mireille Matthieu. Toujours est-il que le mystère demeure, quant aux réels motivations artistiques de nos trois musiciens, qu'ils soient légendaires ou pas. Niveau argumentaire, on nous bourre le mou à grands renforts d'occultisme fumant et de vibrations ésotériques sur fond de transe musicale ritualiste pour expliquer le caractère relativement peu audiogénique de la chose. Rhétorique de hippie ténébreux visant à expliquer à tous les béotiens de service-en clair tous ceux qui ne vont pas aimer-que ce n'est pas du bruit, mais de l'art. Si vous n'êtes pas convaincus, le livret de l'album-plus conceptuel encore que les prédictions de Paco Rabanne-est là pour enfoncer le clou, et affiche une galerie arty d'images en tous genres, qui ont pour seul point commun d'être encore plus louche que la musique du groupe elle-même, perturbant fatalement le champ de vision de toute personne allergique à la darkitude conceptuelle ou qui n'est pas un die-hard fan des X-files. Et comme si cela ne suffisait pas, l'album a été mastérisé, tenez-vous bien, par l'un des grands gourous de la prod' doomesque, j'ai nommé James Plotkins himself, déjà responsable du mastering pour certains des bruitistes les plus vénérés de notre belle planète, comme Sunno))), Khanate, Khlyst, ou que sais-je encore qui fait beaucoup de bruit que pas beaucoup de monde comprend. Ah merde, ça doit être pour ça que j'ai envie de m'ouvrir les veines machinalement toutes les dix secondes, alors. A moins que ce ne soit une réaction subliminale à cette fameuse trance dans laquelle on est supposé entrer en écoutant ce Descension, qui s'avère presque plus viscéral que cérébral, et qu'il ne sert probablement pas à grand chose d'expliquer, finalement. Parce que sinon, comment expliquer l'électrocardiogramme spectralement linéaire de ce post rock fantômatique, qui s'affole brutalement à l'occasion d'épilepsies sonores fugitives incarnées par quelques démons bruitistes qui veulent du mal à vos tympans ? Comment expliquer cette basse platement obsédante qui vous tape autant sur les nerfs que sur le cerveau ? Comment expliquer que sur le dernier titre, je n'ai toujours pas réussi à comprendre même en allant voir un psy si certains des bruits que je percevais étaient le sifflement d'un train fantôme ou Hulk en train de déchirer une porte blindée ? La seule chose vraiment rationnelle en fin de compte, c'est ce « vrai » riff de guitare qui n'est pas totalement torturé à la moulinette noise au point qu'on arrive plus vraiment à savoir ce que c'est, et qu'on entend au début du conclusif « Disease ». Un riff en phase terminale, qui évoquerait un Earth encore plus déshydraté qu'à l'accoutumé, et qui se désèche avec une lenteur languide en un drone d'une noirceur tellurique, avant de finir par se désagréger complètement pour laisser de nouveau place à cette antienne hypnothique qui maintient l'auditeur sous sa coupe depuis le début. Encore ces manifestations paranormales qui altèrent votre environnement sonore, ces maudits grésillements qui vous vrillent le cerveau, cette salope de basse qui n'en finit plus de se lover comme un serpent métallique dans votre oreille, le cauchemard reprend de plus belle, jusqu'à la dissolution finale de ce mauvais rêve dans le continum espace temps. Un mauvais rêve que certains appelleront « bruit », d'autres « art », et quant à moi j'ai choisi mon camp, le même que celui des toujours avisés Aquarius records, pour ne pas changer. |
review in OOR
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RATE YOUR MUSIC : The darkest, coldest, blackest and most disturbing KRAUTROCK album you'll probably hear. This is what you get when ex-Black Metalers decide to make hypnotic and motorik rock reminiscent to what the German's where doing in the early 70's. Yes. You heard right. Black Metalers doing Krautrock. This controversial idea may either intrigue you or scare you away and I hope that you're not one of the later. Aluk Todolo is a French band in which the three members have been previously playing in Black Metal bands (Diamatregon and Vediog Svaor) and decide to team up and play rigid, pulsating, noisy, ominous rock. The interesting thing about Aluk Todolo is that the band members bring their occult and bleak ideas of their previous bands to Aluk Todolo's music which ends up as being a combination of Krautrock instrumentation with the atmosphere of Black Metal. Adding to the virulent atmosphere the band also delves into Industrial music making the already cheerless music baneful. The album starts off with "Obedience" which is the rawest, unrelenting and discordant track on the album. It may start slowly and quietly with a low hum in the distant background, but then it hits you hard with a wall of Industrial noise and drums blasting everywhere and it won't subside until the whole 8 minutes of the song ends. "Burial Ground" and "Woodchurch" can be seen as full song since they don't differ much in their rhythm. Sounding less aggressive than "Obedience" still won't be a good thing here. Aluk Todolo plays here with a slow and dreadful marching rhythm while the guitar screams and shrieks like lost souls burning in hell. The music here seems to get dimmer and dimmer when every song passes by and the last song, "Disease", seems like the culmination of it all. After a noisy introduction the band shows us the darkest and coldest moment on the album with a pounding rhythm (with a bass sound reminiscent to Zeuhl bands) that shakes your brain as well as the ground while listening to it. And just after the ground below you crumbles the music ends and you're on your way down to the depths of the Tartarus. Descension isn't pretty. There's nothing melodic in it and not a single ray of light passes through the music. Aluk Todolo managed to create one of the most despiteful and wicked album that has come out of the Krautrock genre. If you're a fan of bands like Neu!, Can and This Heat, but have a certain taste for the occult (or you're simply curious like me) then I highly recommend Aluk Todolo's Descencion, even if you're using it to give nightmares to your little brothers or cousins. Occult Rock? You bet. Chamberry |
KRONIC : Invocazioni sataniche Ipnoticamente occulti e sperimentalmente sinistri, gli Aluk Todolo sono un gruppo francese dalla difficile classificazione. "Descension" ostenta influenze black metal, krautrock ed industrial, coniugando suoni ripetuti in maniera ossessiva con contaminazioni quasi eteree, specchio di una spiritualitá latente ma mai sopita. Nonostante la brutalitá esecutiva le quattro lunghe tracce conservano un pizzico di fascino tra onde distorsive e gelidi paesaggi sonori. Solo per gli amanti dei suoni misteriosi. Alessandro Bonetti |
SURREALDOCUMENTS The title of instrumental Occult Rock cabal Aluk Todolo's debut album 'Descension' is the title of John Coltrane's watershed album "Ascension" turned upside down ... like a Satanic cross. Aluk Todolo hails from France and is comprised of members of two Black Metal bands: Diamatregon (who put out their debut album, "Blasphemy For Satan" on tUMULt) and Vediog Svaor. Said to be recorded in a cave in the Alps, "Descension" was produced by none other than James Plotkin (Old, Phantomsmasher, Khanate, Khlyst). Most reviewers of 'Descension' focus on that album's Krautrock inspiration, referencing Can, Faust, Harmonia. Other writers point to Post Punk influences: This Heat, even Einstürzende Neubauten - and all these writers are entirely justified in doing so. I need not repeat these readings of 'Descension' here. Certainly, references to these Post Punk and Krautrock band are more appropriate than references to Coltrane's monumental "Ascension", as there is no overt Jazz influence audible in Descension's blackend sound world. And - though Aluk Todolo's album is astonishing - it would be foolish to compare them to Coltrane on a strictly artistic level. But what about the significance of the album's title - 'Descension'? There are signifyers one cannot use without calling forth ghosts ... like using the word "summer" in an album title risks evoking the restless spirits of the Beach Boys. Referencing "Ascension" in the context of Aluk Todolo's music is a little like a Black Metal band naming it's album "A Hate Supreme". Is the music of Aluk Todolo's debut an inversion of John Coltrane's? The lettering of the band's name on the album's cover art certainly points towards an inversion: all are upside down. So let us see whether a web of significance can be spun between "Ascension" and "Descension" by analyzing the one as an inversion of the other. Where Coltrane's "Ascension" was produced by a big band (10 musicians!) and seems to ascribe to a "more is more" aesthetic, "Descension" is the creation of a power trio (bass, drums, guitar) and staunchly minimalist. Coltrane's "Ascension" is improvised, expansive and free: the saxophonist "..de-contextualised and fragmented the orthodox syntactical elements of jazz, viz. tempo, rhythm and pulse, harmonic progressions and set "changes", keys and tonal centres..." (sourced here). Where "Ascension" is improvised, expansive and free, "Descension" is the opposite: it is composed, tight and controlled. The drums rhythms are so simple and lo-fi as to be almost almost skeletal, a far cry from Rashied Ali's multidirectional, near-chaotic drumming; the bass is a monomanically pulsating mantra; and even the guitar noise - though very psychedelic, sometimes rumbling, sometimes roaring, at times grating and abrasive - seems almost to be electronically programmed. A cross is still a cross, even if it is turned upside down. Both Aluk Todolo and Coltrane's music are oriented towards an ecstatic mysticism. The band's name points towards the Eastern philosophy John Coltrane was so very much interested in: Aluk Todolo is the name of the religious tradition of the Toraja people, polytheistic animists who live in the mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. But where Coltrane was open to all the world's cultures because he was an inclusionary humanist, Aluk Todolo uses the intercultural reference to send an anti-enlightenment message. And where Coltrane, in Freudian terms, was animated by the 'pleasure principle', Aluk Todolo is propelled by a 'death drive': the Toraja people is famous for their elaborate funeral rites and their burial sites carved into rocky cliffs. Coltrane was very much interested in the Yoruba religion, in which Afro-American divinities enter the body of the priests consecrated to that spiritual being. Furthermore, Ascension's playing style is a sort of glossolalia - speaking in tongues, ecstatically possessed by the Holy Ghost. Likewise, in a Terrorizer interview Aluk Todolo's spokesman said that the album "...was recorded during summer 2006 in the Alps, in a cave. There, what lurks between the folds of the audible can become real. We started recording at dusk, exhausted after several hours of invocation. When we finally disappeared behind the forces we summoned, we reached the conditions to record 'Descension'." Disappearing behind spiritual beings doubtlessly refers to possession. Both Coltrane's band at the time "Ascension" was recorded, and Aluk Todolo can be described as trance possession cults. But where Coltrane strove to incarnate a God who is "A Love Supreme", Aluk Todolo channels malicious, hateful spirits. Where the spiritual nature of "Ascension" is essentially optimist, presenting an ecstatic yearning for a better world, for the Kingdom Come, "Descension" points downwards, towards an acephalic and ruined society, towards an abyss abandoned by God. Descension's beautiful album cover art is an apt symbol of that: it is a black and white photograph of a headless, broken and weathered statue of the Buddha or an Eastern deity set against an old brick wall. Aluk Todolo's "Descension" is a withering lotus flower, it's leaves falling in mesmerizing stop-motion. Post scriptum : Aluk Todolo's 'Descension' is not the first album to invert Coltrane's "Ascension": Stefan Jaworzyn's eponymous noise rock band is (more explicit) example. Yet another might be "Descension" by Yellow Swans (an album I haven't heard). Here is an Italian-language interview with A.H., the band's drummer (link). I can see where the references to This Heat comes from - but, given their band name, I'd like to see them explore ethnopsychedelic montage, to write an 'Urban Gamelan' or a 'The Gospel Comes To New Guinea' (23 Skidoo) for the 21st century. |
MUZIKE : Los tres componentes de la banda de black metal de Grenoble, Diamatregon, deciden en el año 2006 analizar de nuevo algunos de los conceptos que habían estado manejando hasta entonces y reinterpretarlos de forma algo más sutil y, posiblemente, más veraz. Es así como nace Aluk Todolo (al parecer, significa en Indonesia el camino de los ancestros) definido por ellos mismos como rock ocultista, en busca de niveles elevados de trance psicodélico y de nuevos estados de conciencia. Influenciados por los trabajos de G.I. Gurdjeff, Madame Blavatsky y Aleister Crowley (eche mago niigro según Iker Jiménez), y armados de un buen montón de sígiles decidieron a finales de 2006 encerrarse en una cueva (así puede parecerlo el sonido) y tras horas de rituales grabar Descension. Es ésta su opera prima, tras un par de demos editadas en vinilo, publicada el año pasado en el sello norteamericano Public Guilt en CD y en plástico por el inglés Riot Season. Situemos nuestras sillas en dirección a Boleskine y comencemos a comentar Descension, buena muestra de las intenciones conceptuales y musicales de la banda. Basados en una base rítmica muy marcada, relativamente lenta y repetitiva, permiten que sean las guitarras las que experimenten desde el punteo, el uso del arco de violín y la distorsión hasta lo puramente noise; en una propuesta meramente instrumental, que de nuevo vemos relacionada en diferentes medios con el kraut-rock. Desde la extraña percusión de Obedience, las voces fantasmagóricas se elevan y estallatodo en un ruidoso set lo-fi en ocasiones estridente. En Burial Ground y Woodchurch nos dejaremos vencer por la repetición sin desmayo de las bases rítmicas, dando paso a un estado cercano a la hipnosis en el que imágenes de pobredumbre y sufrimiento se entremezclarán. Disease nos dejará a solas con un insólito riff de guitarra que dará paso a las únicas voces (deformadas) y los intentos noise insertados en el flujo de los reaparecidos bajo y batería (platillos torturados mediante). Efectivamente, Descension no es un disco fácil y, entendido como reconstrucción alternativa de algunas de las bases del black es tremendamente acertado puesto que crea pasajes temibles sin tener que recurrir a los viejos trucos del género (ya superados ampliamente por sus propios clichés). Así, complejo y molesto; necesario, pues siempre hemos creído que hay que enfrentarse al reverso oscuro de las artes. Desde la agonía y la presencia de la maldad podremos elevarnos, de nuevo, en espíritu purificados (o no) . Como Diamatregon pronto editarán nuevo disco bajo el título de Crossroads.. Lavrenti |
heathenharvest.com |
MAELSTROM : Having Aluk Todolo's Descension in your CD collection is like having to choose between the proverbial red pill and a load of blue pills. Take the blue pill (or: any other CD) and you're back in safe territory. But, let the damned curiosity prevail, go on, choose the red one that's been beckoning you and tickling your imagination — and face the consequences. You'll need strong constitution and considerable mental stability, but even then, who knows where or in what state you'll end up. There'll be some damage to your system; but the stronger you are, the smaller the amount of it will be. But, one way or another, you're literally screwed. The French trio (including members of Diamatregon and Vediog Svaor) has a fair share of knowledge about ritual magic(k) and the occult theories. Descension, their first full-length (after the 2006, self-titled EP), is, finally, a proof of what can be done when theory translates into practice. The contents are easy to describe. Superficially, the four tracks are nothing but a few long, repetitive patterns. Simple drums, endlessly doing one and the same thing, continuous bass and guitar lines and some unpleasant noises. Nothing could be more retarded or boring, you might say. Far, far from the truth. Even farther from the light. Things don't look so safe once you actually hear it. The opening "song," called "Obedience," is perfectly named — the sound: nothing but drums and distortion; the rhythm: the layers of noise swirling around and the sheer pain of the sum of those are just plain merciless. Call it whatever you want, but Aluk Todolo will instantly find a weak spot in your psyche, grab it, ride it and blow it out of proportion. If you didn't know you had one, the worse for you. And no, trying to escape won't do you any good. You're just a piece of flesh, whatever it is you considered to be your soul now belongs to someone else and he's not being kind with it. After that, there's no more noise, at least not of such a horrible kind. Yet, there is no time to relax. There's no need for noise because "Burial Ground," "Woodchurch," and "Disease" have their own wicked ways of doing the same thing. The victim is still trapped inside the endless circle of sounds. Mesmerized, entranced, easily forced to listen and doomed to be painfully amazed by the seemingly similar sounds becoming ever more intense, closing in on you, chopping away pieces of your consciousness, withdrawing, returning and finally leaving you exhausted and violated at the last second of Descension. Not before. Although unique, Descension actually makes other music sound strange and inappropriate. Think of other bands — a vague memory — and ask what's the point in having vocals, when they just detract? Why do the other bands' guitars play so many things, yet end up sounding like one and the same, happy, thing? Is there a need for that? Why play complicated when simplicity breeds far greater anxiety? And is it a guitar or a bass? Or two bass guitars? Where did those bizarre noises come from? What makes them, what gives them orders and why do they listen? How can Aluk Todolo do it and where do their methods of commanding those — and other — sounds come from? Don't ask. And no, Descension isn't red. It's in black and silver printing. To a regular eye, the signs, drawings and symbols don't look familiar. Every line (probably) has its own meaning, but the meanings will have to remain a question. Gaze at it all the time in the world and you'll be none the wiser. While you're at it, you'll probably want to listen to it again, just to check if it's really what you thought it was. And it will be. A word of advice: don't listen to Aluk Todolo while driving, walking, managing sharp objects, or if you're planning on having a nice day. If you're a drug user, avoid it like the plague. Descension is NOT safe. Things like this shouldn't be legally available. (9.6/10) review by: Mladen Škot |
LOSINGTODAY : There’s been a fair amount of teeth gnashing and intermittent bots of throwing ourselves through the air against walls in our gaff since we finally get off our lazy hides and put this beauty on the turntable. The gnashing of teeth due in the main to discovering the small though painfully consequential fact that this lot have somehow managed to sneak past a release in the shape of their self titled two track 7” for Public Guilt - the blighters. While our strange re-acquaintance with the walls in our place are borne of the fact that we are utterly smitten by this colossal unholy sounding four track hybrid opus of kraut, dark psych and blood chilled industrialism.
‘Descension’ is the debut Aluk Todolo full length release - limited to just 500 vinyl copies via the rather tasty Riot Season imprint who are it has to be said garnering something of a reputation for being latent spotters of taste makers (in our gaff anyway) having just blown us away with the latest double vinyl outing for the very excellent Shit ’n’ Shine (a review is imminent) as well as offering safe haven for the of those Jap psych overlords Acid Mothers Temple as well as in recent memory outings for the Skull Defekts and Black Boned Angel (which I have to hear and now come highly recommended).
The French trio who are made up of members of occultist / black metal ensembles previously unknown to us (now isn’t that familiar) Diamatregon and Vediog Svaor have in ’Descension’ delivered one of the early runners for psyche debut of the year. Loosening up on their black metal upbringing ’descension’ is grimly layered, the opening sequences of ’obedience’ envelope the listener in a sinew tightening tenseness routinely marked and scarred by the delicate drift of an apocalyptically monastic and bleak monochromatic backdrop before the frenzied scourge of hammer headed primordial kraut grooves are unleashed with blood letting intent. Unrelenting, inescapable and impeccably claustrophobic, this caustic armoury provides the setting for a serious power driven locked down head fuck of some measure beset with a raging frontal assault of howling feedback skree, acute no wave dialects and doom lashed foreboding and retribution.
The ice dripped looping skin jangling paranoia of ‘burial ground’ drops the temperature to near chilling, ominous and skulking this heavily set bleak and blankly slice of fraught post punk taps disturbingly in to the monolithic atmospheres of Joy Division at their most overtly hollowed and here we are thinking ’dead souls’ and ’decades’ whilst intermittently being subjected to scorch marks resulting from hostile fuzz furies that neatly blends into…..
…’woodchurch’ which annoyingly our spell checker keeps trying to change to Woodchuck (whatever happened to them?) is as eerie as it gets is replete with life force evaporating drone montages that mooch restlessly like some kind of pulsating sonic black hole sucking dry any semblance of light - think LaBradford in a face off with Growing.
Its left to the parting ’disease’ to provide the set with its curtain closing centrepiece - deliciously set off and primed by some stunning dust ridden fuzzed up snaking blues accents as though a smoking Bill Horist had lifted some neat side winding riff tricks from Ry Cooder before being dragged backwards into darkening oppressive haze of stricken industrial treated drone dub collages whipped straight out of the arse pocket of an early career Roy Montgomery. Fierce some stuff.
All at once brooding and brutal ‘descension’ is an uncompromising ceremony of caustic generic engineering and an absolute must have record collection addition. BY MARK BARTON |
WARPMART : This album by Aluk Todolo deftly blends the cold and dark aesthetic of Black metal with the cosmic trance and experimentation of Krautrockers such as Can and Faust, to great effect. Across the album's four epic tracks the moods and styles are very different, from bracing blizzards of guitar noise to hypnotic metallic rhythms and guitars, it's almost a post-rock album in some ways, but with a difference in influences and intent, the feeling here is raw and lo-fi compared to the studio gloss of post rock. It's a great album and an experiment that works well. |
CRUCIALBLAST : First heard Aluk Todolo on that debut 7" that the band released on Implied Sound last year, which I thought was a real blast of fetid hypno rock inscribed with cryptic occult imagery and one hell of a pounding groove, major groove, a kind of satanic trance rock meltdown that felt like it was crawling right off of the edge of the vinyl. Great stuff that caught the attention of a lot of people that follow this sort of thing, and this past November saw the release of Aluk Todolo's first full length on Public Guilt, which has been building a heavy buzz ever since it came out. On Descension, Aluk Todolo have carved out a pitch-black krautrock masterpiece that ends up sounding akin to Circle performing the background music for a black mass while being mixed by Masami Akita armed with short-circuiting amplifiers in each hand, punctuating their nocturnal dronerock rituals with blasts of white-hot electronic skzzzz. Aluk Todolo features members of the black metal cult Diametragon, but the main thread that ties the two bands together is the musician's use of brutal white noise as a kind of lead instrument; in Diametragon, the band splatters their razorwire black metal asaults with ear shredding skree, but here the noise is draped in layers over skeletal rock instrumentation, a basic drums/guitar/bass lineup that forms minimalistic propulsive jams that swim in black feedback and atmospheric speaker buzz. Like This Heat and Einsutrzende Neubaten filtered through an endless blackdronenoise ritual, sinister melodic sigils forming out of the fuzz and forming a claustraphobic, creepy low fi psych epic, their rhythms relentless in movement. The opening "Obedience" starts off as swirling black ambience with a shuffling sheet metal rhythm banging away in the background, and then suddenly a wavering female chorale appears and the whole song suddenly explodes into a clamorous, propulsive krautrock jam, simplistic driving drumming slicing through a storm of overloaded demon howls and white noise. It's really low fi and garagey sounding, but powerful and totally in-the-red. On "Burial Ground", the band sets up a tense, claustrophobic vibe with a simple guitar arpeggio played over weird FX, rusted metal percussion, tinny evil drones and a plodding drumbeat. "Woodchurch" is another slow, plodding jam that almost seems to invert the guitar part from the previous track and crank the distortion way up while layers of machine noise and FX shift and warp above it; the last track, "Disease", has another shambling hypnotic drumbeat playing in an odd time signature accompanied by trippy distorted effects and blasts of overmodulated acid guitar clipping throughout the jam. Imagine an evil, hypnotic fusion of the super blown-out blackness of Wold and Akitsa, Harry Pussy's shambolic noise, and This Heat. Slow marches into unnerving noise frequencies and atmospheric clatter are served up as black magic meditations, and alternate with invocations of demonic krautrock. Highly recommended ! |
ALL MUSIC It might be a bit much to say that Aluk Todolo are just another instrumental art-metal band from France but, after all, they are. Still, they have the signifiers down cold -- moody as hell cover art, appropriate song titles and so forth. But they've got a couple of other things going for them -- mastering courtesy of James Plotkin, who does a terrific job, plus an album title that shows they're aware of the Skullflower wing of things, which is always handy. Put it all together with what they have and Descension succeeds as a good debut, and it helps that for the first two minutes of opening track "Obedience" everything seems like it'll be one thing -- minimal, moody croons and wails, low tones and general gothed-out feelings -- before the band crashes into a mess of brawling, huge-sounding noise, with drummer A.H. making a hell of a cymbal-heavy racket in particular. Meantime S.R's compressed, screeching and trebly feedback on the concluding "Disease" actually makes for more of an honestly irritating (in a good way!) metal move than a fair amount of the chunkier riffs out there. In contrast to the hyperextremes moments like the steady, atmospheric but otherwise unremarkable slow pace of the first half of "Burial Ground" don't immediately stand out, yet they show that they can make a good enough soundtrack to a doom-plod if they'd like. "Woodchurch" does the same basic approach but feels just that much more compelling, with Hadzioannou's rolling drumming adding an extra kick to the moody proceedings. Ned Raggett |
OBSKURE : Obédience : Obéissance d'un religieux à ses supérieurs. Tout est là, la religion et l'extrême subordination. Aluk Todolo, modeste disciple, explore l'expérience du lancinement par le respect strict et impérieux du dogme qui est le sien. On reproche aux groupes s'habillant en noir de célébrer le mal? On leur reproche de placer quelques références subliminales? Aluk Todolo EST le mal, son œuvre est CONSTAMENT subliminale. Et difficile. Très difficile.
Sur le plan sonore, la torture auditive est parfaite, instrumentale et précise. Un travail méticuleusement bâclé, torché. Savamment bruyant. Dur et répétitif. L'écoute intégrale de « Obedience » est pénible, elle relève de l'épreuve d'initiation. Les autres titres, baignant l'auditeur dans une ambiance torturée, grondeuse, sont à peine plus accessibles.
Cette douleur est excellente. L'écoute complète de « Descension » n'est absolument d'aucun intérêt, hors hypnotique. Elle ne procure aucun plaisir, excepté si on aime souffrir. Mais, chaque seconde de cette œuvre, chaque sifflement et chaque saturation qu'elle contient comporte un intérêt scientifique, musical, psychologique et peut-être même théologique monumental, réellement saisissant.
Une référence. |
review in PLAN B
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RATEYOURMUSIC : This is such utterly original music with so much going on within its sonic boundaries that it's near-impossible not to do the lazy thing and reference other artists to describe Aluk Todolo. My head aches from just trying to grasp all the complexities in Descension, so: Flying Saucer Attack's feedback-laden skree sped-up and launched forward; Bardo Pond's Gibbon Bros. trying to push their proto-psychedelica through a wall of abused and maniacally malfunctioning speakers; early-catalog Bowery Electric herded by cattle prods into sounding a disaster siren; Seefeel's lightly industrial yet intelligent electronic reverb and pump forced through a tiny point in a corroding, scuzzy sonic loop. This is a free noise and ambient dub mash-up with black metal overtones and all the chaos that implies, but the violence is coralled loosely within a post-rock structure, the result of which is an eminently listenable album where the ferocious intensity is in service to the creation of a smart yet primal sound. Repetition frames and anchors the whole so that the band members can parry and thrust intuitively across the strangely placid surface that emerges. If the constitution of the compositions dissapates at times into non-musicality, it is always brought back into a state of relaxation so that the slow, gargantuan build of fizzy tension can start anew. It's a post-metal fist fight that devolves into a krautrock orgy. It seems to involve everything, and yet it's nothing like what you've heard before. Enjoy carefully. RIStout. |
PROGARCHIVES Monotony in Black ...ALUK TODOLO calls it 'Occult Rock' and presents something midway between Kraut and Tech Extreme Metal. I came across the band because of the announced Krautrock interfaces and it's true - they are noticeable because of the repetitive, industrial sounding rhythm section, a little bit comparable to FAUST and especially the project SPACE EXPLOSION. I know it's intended in this way - and with all my respect - not a great challenge for drummer A.H. though. Anyhow - never listened to music like this and it's very unique indeed. Ambient, trance and even some floydy psych elements are also to state, for example with Burial Ground which is the most catchy song for me. But in the whole this instrumental album is still not very melodic - rather with a dark and cold atmosphere, a lot of sometimes unfamiliar effects and harsh noisy walls of sounds/feedbacks. Not everyone's taste for sure - either you love it or you hate it. Not my cup of tea anyway and the summary is: recommended first of all to doom and hardcore fans. Rivertree. |
DEADTIDE : Well first of all don't ask me to classify this because I can't. However I can definitively say that it is quite dull. The first song alone should tell you where this album is going as it is a storm of instruments recorded with the levels way too high so it sounds like a heavily distorted toilet flush that lasts seven minutes. I would think that is all this is except I can kind of hear a drumbeat in there. This gets a little better after that, especially on the second song Burial Ground. That is the highlight of the album as it is geniuniely atmospheric and creepy, led mostly by a truly ominous bassline and percussion that reminds me a bit of Einsturzende Neubaten. Combine this with a rather bizarre organ riff and you get a solid bit of ambiance. Sadly even this goes slightly awry as it lasts over ten minutes and it can get a little dull. The band loved the bassline so much that they used it for the song after Burial Ground, meaning that two of the four songs have the same bassline. The four songs here add up to a bit over 37 minutes so they tend to be quite long. This is something of a problem as there isn't a lot going on here. I doubt I could stand to listen to this unless I just had it on the background for noise. It's good atmosphere but it isn't quite catchy enough to stick with me. Also that first song is just painful to listen to, but the other three are decent. K.Huckins |
OCTOPUS (album of the week) : En mélangeant krautrock et black-metal, les parisiens d'Aluk Todolo dévoilent un plan de bataille sonore insidieux et torturé. Une approche personnelle et hypnotisante. Avec ce Descension, pas de dissension, le trio parisien Aluk Todolo vient de publier un condensé de ce que tous les fans de krautrock métronomique, de noise-rock tellurique et de black metal désharmonisé était en droit d'espérer au moment où toutes les familles de la digression électrique, traditionnellement si peu perméables, semblent trouver des points de convergence diaboliquement efficaces. Héritières de formations au pedigree torturé (Diamatregon, Vediog Svaor), Aluk Todolo parsème son paysage sonore de montées transcendantales chaotiques et saturées (le destructif "Obedience") et de plages plus lymphatiques ("Burial ground"), aux confins d'une relecture subtilement heavy/doom de sonorités cold-wave fascinantes. Par le truchement des détails sonores omniprésents, plongeant la musique du trio dans une ode post-industrielle instable, des imbrications hypnotiques et lancinantes d'une musique tendue mais insidieusement planante (la plage mortifère "Woodchurch") et enfin d'une production lo-fi, minimaliste et crue (le son de batterie !) offrant une coloration autant surréaliste que mystique à l'ensemble, Aluk Todolo réussit un véritable tour de force. En quatre titres, le groupe offre une expression à la fois ritualisée et élaborée de l'essence monolithique et imprévisible du rock/métal le plus sauvage, traduisant dans une formule rythmique syncopée et obsessionnelle l'équation mathématique irrésolue jusque-là du This Heat + Burzum = quoi ? Merci à eux. Laurent Catala |
Chronique dans Noise
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STNT.ORG : En mal du Rage de leur 20 ans (ouais, c’est pas forcément la meilleure référence, mais passons – mon entrée en matière ne marcherait pas si j’avais dit Metal Hammer ou Top 50 magazine), beaucoup de trentenaires à la mèche molle et à la bedaine naissante se sont tournés vers Versus et maintenant Noise Mag. Et c’est vrai qu’on peut s’estimer heureux qu’il y ait enfin un magazine où l’on puisse lire le mot « no wave »… Passons, ce n’est pas là non plus que je veux en venir. N’importe quel chroniqueur sait que pour que ses chroniques aient un tant soi peu de légitimité, il lui faut de temps à autres trouver sa tête de turc – sacrifice nécessaire sur l’autel de la démagogie. Et si ce chroniqueur assume un tant soit peu sa paresse, il n’hésitera pas à lâcher l’avis le plus péremptoire sur un groupe qu’il n’a pas écouté une fois. On peut tout à fait, et de la même façon, parler d’un livre qu’on n’a pas lu (cf. Pierre Bayard). Jeu amusant, et qui peut être prétexte à des paris entre potes. « Tiens, t’as vu ce skeud ? Rien qu’à la pochette je peux en parler comme si je l’avais écouté ». Remarquons au passage que les groupes, sans doute par défiance envers des « journalistes » qu’ils estiment paresseux, envoient souvent un press book détaillé qu’il ne reste qu’à paraphraser… Evidemment, il s’agit de théories de paranoïaques… Tiens, ce genre de théories qu’on pourrait échafauder après avoir lu la chronique du premier album d’Aluk Todolo dans Noise Mag.
Parce que c’est vrai… que retiendrait-on d’Aluk Todolo sans l’avoir écouté ? Tiens, en se contentant d’avoir lu la première interview que nous tend Google, ou consulté la page Myspace du groupe depuis un PC dont la carte son est grillée ? Ben en fait, on aurait déjà un avis plus éclairé que l’article cité plus haut…
Eh oui ! Pour faire d’Aluk Todolo un groupe vaguement indus old school teinté de « raw black » à la Leviathan – longs cheveux (visibles sur les photos lives) obligent –, il faudrait encore pousser la paresse d’un cran. Ah, ah !... c’est vrai que le black est une des récentes grandes découvertes de la hype. Descend-on plus bas dans la chronique, elle se fait plus précise, évoquant (nonchalamment) les rythmiques hypnotiques et les divers bruitages (faits par une guitare, il eût fallu le noter)… Le point d’orgue reste la comparaison avec The Residents… Si je jouais à ce jeu-là, je pourrais dire que vraiment, mais alors vraiment, Isis… non, rien. C’est absurde. Et je déteste Isis.
Pourquoi réduire Descension au premier titre ? C’est une étrangeté plutôt dommageable. Pas seulement parce qu’à mon goût ce n’est pas le meilleur (je préfère de loin le deuxième et le quatrième), mais surtout parce que les morceaux de cet album ne peuvent pas s’appréhender séparément – ils s’intègrent dans un ensemble construit, une progression. Et que dans cet ensemble, le premier morceau joue de toute évidence un rôle d’intro. Le mix va contre toute forme de linéarité, que ce soit dans la progression de l’album, ou à un niveau vertical (il y a une brutalité des timbres – brutalité au sens d’art brut). Et pourquoi réduire (réduire, toujours réduire…) les Aluk Todolo au black metal ? Parce que s’il s’agit de black metalleux, leur premier mérite est justement d’avoir su remiser cette influence, les clichés formels qu’on lui prête immanquablement. Si ici le son est crade, c’est le plus souvent du low-fi plutôt soft façon seventies, et le mix ne se fait (harsh) noise que par moments – aux moments appropriés, aux moments clé –, mais certainement pas black metal. Plutôt que soumise à la dictature du riff, la guitare est triturée à coups d’archet, de bootleneck, etc., filtrée, pour en tirer des effets plus ou moins aléatoires – là encore, une démarche qui n’a rien de black metal. Quant à l’indus, je ne vois pas non plus… Il me semble que c’est à base de machines, non ? Mais il ne me semble pas que distordre un mix de batterie suffise à faire de l’indus… Peut-être parce que la batterie est simple, minimaliste, cyclique… mais dans le même temps vivante, captivante, sacrément hypnotique ! Ne reste à la basse (une basse au son seventies à souhait) qu’à apporter une trame mélodique simple, répétitive – qui ne trahisse pas la batterie. Parce que tout ici est au service d’une aura délibérément fascinante. Pour faire court, disons qu’on se trouve en face d’un rock répétitif et expérimental, et dans une ambiance onctueusement mystérieuse.
Pour en revenir aux influences, on pourrait évidemment rapprocher certaines parties guitares d’Acid Mother Temple, d’autres de Keiji Haino… Ou prendre un morceau comme « Mother Sky » des allemands de Can, le débarrasser des voix, lui rajouter quelques arrangements concrets ou noise, une ambiance plus sombre. Ou prendre les passages les plus hypnotiques de Theusz Hamtaahk de Magma. Ou les ambiances de Faust, lequel avait déjà inventé le bruit dans le rock il y a quarante ans. La grande différence, ce qui rend Aluk Todolo si actuel, c’est qu’il décape le Krautrock de son épaisseur de kitsch psyché.
Je me suis égaré, mais je le sais, le lecteur de chronique est aussi pressé que le journaliste de magazine. Et parce qu’il court souvent à la conclusion pour se faire un avis, je ne dirai que ceci : Aluk Todolo n’est pas loin du coup de génie – celui qui tient à un détail –, et quand un disque reçoit l’aval d’un label comme Public Guilt, on peut y aller les yeux fermés !
Yann (12/05/2008) |
VOIDHANGER : I francesi Aluk Todolo suonano krautrock occulto dagli accenti black metal e industrial. Lo diciamo subito, certi che un connubio del genere possa attirare l'attenzione. In realtà si tratta di una descrizione di comodo, essendo difficile penetrare nel cuore di una musica così misteriosa e sinistra. Eppure, il suo incidere psichedelico e la corposità delle note, così come le strutture aperte tipiche delle jam session, rimandano direttamente alla grande lezione di Can e Faust, qui re-interpretata col piglio luciferino di chi vanta una profonda conoscenza (più che una semplice passione) delle arti oscure e una sicura discendenza black metal (della band fanno parte membri dei Diamatregon). Una gita sul myspace della band vi condurrà attraverso strani simboli alchemici, formule magiche e immagini di oscuri rituali in odor di zolfo. Altrimenti affidatevi ai quattro brani di "Descension", che sin dal titolo promette un viaggio esoterico negli abissi del sé. Si parte con "Obedience", che subito mette all'erta il settimo senso di chi ascolta. E' un flusso improvvisato di note e rumori, che si muove come una marea, sommergendo l'ascoltatore inerme ed impossibilitato a resistere. La sua progressione induce ad una trance inquieta attraverso suoni minimali che nelle due tracce successive, "Burial Ground" e "Woodchurch", si fanno sempre più freddi, ghiacciati, sia nei momenti di stasi totale che in quelli di improvvisa accelerazione ritmica. Importante, in questo sondare abissi interiori, è il contributo di una produzione decisamente lo-fi, che costringe ad alzare il volume e, con esso, il grado di immersione mentale in una dimensione solitamente nascosta ai comuni sensi. In questo modo, l'ascoltatore diventa psiconauta, e la musica è solo una mappa psichedelica per giungere più facilmente alla meta. O per arrivarci il più tardi possibile... Difficile dire quanto la proposta di Aluk Todolo possa interessare chi il black metal non vuole nemmeno provare a immaginarlo vestito in modo diverso; figuriamoci se addirittura lo si imparenta con la psichedelia kraut. Ma come il gruppo ha ben detto in una recente intervista, "Sarebbe d'aiuto a molti blacksters rendersi conto che l'oscurità non è nata nel 1992... e che se un negro non avesse venduto la sua anima al diavolo per imparare il blues, il black metal non sarebbe neppure esistito." |
AMAZON-UK : Black atmosphere... Awesome music..., This album is a krautrock-like improvisation recorded in a cave. That should give you a good idea of how atmospheric this album is.The members of this band are all in a black metal band called 'Diametregon' who play true black metal and this project was what decided to do when they wanted to do something a little different but just as negative.The music at the beginning of the first track, 'Obedience', is like a sense of creeping menace getting closer and closer until the incredible guitar barrage which makes up the second part of the track explodes out of the speakers.The second track, 'Burial Ground' seems to rise out of the ashes of 'Obedience' and scamper around like a diseased corpse in an underground zombie flick. Eventually the guitar, bass and drums form into a repetitive trance-inducing riff and then the track segues into 'Woodchurch'.In 'Woodchurch' the music continues to create a truly dark atmosphere and put the listener into a deep trance but on the final track 'Disease' the trance is over.'Disease' contains more dark atmospheric riffs interspersed with loud moments of distorted electric guitar that kick the listener awake and create an amazing contrast.I recommend this album to every fan of classic krautrock and also fans of black metal that pushes the boundaries of the genre, for instance 'Blut Aus Nord' and drone doom such as Sunn O))).4/5 Mr. J. S. Crivello. |
EMORAGEI : Le trio français de rock-noise, krautrock et faux métal nous arrive enfin avec un premier album de quatre longues pièces bruyantes. La lourdeur de la musique expérimentée sur Descension est comparable à celle de Mogwai (en plus lo-fi) plutôt qu'à celle de groupes comme Sunn0))) qui joue définitivement plus avec les basses fréquences. Certaines influences rappellent ici le krautrock allemand (celui de Can, Faust et de Neu !), tout en y insérant un peu de son plus contemporain tel que celui des Sonic Youth ou encore le défunt groupe Hovercraft. Le livret et ses images nous transportent dans un monde sombre, occulte et spirituel où la musique sert à vous hypnotiser et vous convaincre de ses bienfaits. La section rythmique est répétitive, tandis que de son côté la guitare transporte petit à petit des atmosphères qui gagneront à certains endroits leur pleine intensité. Un beau premier effort, souhaitons une meilleure production pour leur second disque que nous attendrons impatiemment ! (3/5) par Jeff Bugz |
LAHORDENOIRE : Aluk Todolo est un projet des membres du groupe de black grenoblois DIAMATREGON et autant dire que depuis leur dernier album Blasphemy for Satan en 2002, le groupe a bien évolué, sa dernière trace étant le ep Charognard en 2003. Pour ma part, ce groupe ne m'avait absolument pas marqué à tous les niveaux… Depuis l'un de ses membres a crée le très bon label Amortout, qui sort toujours des productions très intéressantes, dans le registre du sombre, du malsain ou de l'expérimental, un autre est impliqué dans Super SS de l'industrial noise. La réunion de l'ancien trio se fait donc sous le signe de l'évolution de chacun de ses membres, par-contre ALUK TODOKO n'est pas la suite ni le substitue à DIAMATREGON puisqu'un troisième album est en préparation C'est plutôt un projet autre et parallèle puisque la musique de ALUK RODOLO est expérimentale, certes un membre avait fait un album solo de black experimental avec VEDIOG SVAHOR, mais cette fois-ci c'est tout de même plus radical. On est bien loin du black metal, pourtant celui-ci aurait servi comme matériau de départ, peut-être qu'à force de remodifier plein d'éléments, Descension est né. ALUK TOODOKO suit donc le chemin des anciens black metalleux qui n'ont pas eu peur d'évoluer et d'expérimenter, comme Ulver par exemple, par-contre c'est un résultat complètement différent, il n'y a pas ici de sonorités electroniques, et il ne s'agit pas non plus d'une musique faite planqué derrière un ordinateur. En fait, la musique de ALUK TODOLO est constituée à partir de guitare, basse, batterie, mais sans aucun chant, par-contre tout est ici travail sur le son. Le résultat en est une musique très répétitive et mid-tempo, avec de nombreux bruitages et des distortions de son. On n'est toutefois pas du tout dans une musique chaotique comme Folkstorm par exemple, non, on est dans quelque chose de bien plus paisible, pas dans des paysages apocalyptiques ou violents, mais dans quelque chose de mid-tempo, d'un peu rythmique d'ailleurs, un rythme battu très nonchalamment. La démarche du groupe se veut apparemment rituelle, le nom du groupe vient de l'indonésien et signifie "la voie (au sens de chemin) des ancêtres", ce qui expliquerait cette démarche non pas apocalyptique mais progressive, sans non plus être dans du post-rock, ni faire du dark ambient; on peut peut-être songer à Einsturzende Neubauten dans la démarche de faire une musique expérimentale à partir d'une instrumentation rock ou encore à Sonic Youth pour le côté distortions des sons, mais marié alors à de l'ambiant et sans l'énergie du rock. L'atmosphère de ces quatre longues plages réparties sur 37mn est assez planante, on ne peut pas parler de musique oppressante ni dépressive ou tourmentée, mais il s'agit d'une musique planante sans être apaisée, répétitive de par son rythme mais pourtant anarchique, saturée sans être vraiment bruyante ou violente, étrange et sans émotion, évoquant un état second planant mais nonchalant. Un album intéressant qui fait suite à un ep, particulier mais sans être pour autant fortement accrocheur. Adnauseam 6,5/10 |
AVANTGARDE-METAL : Minimalism obscure, the Way of the Ancestors: Hallucinogenic haunting black filth at the bottom of an occult well.
Simplistic ritual motorik drums, monotonous dissonant plodding bass figures... psychotic cavernous sounds from what used to be a guitar, explosions of grating noises washing back and forth in the darkness, sharp drones crawling at a distance, in the deep...
Unhealthy and damp, a slow ritual dance of demons, hideous ghouls feasting silently, the trance of the undead... ALUK TODOLO, the Way of the Ancestors, is the ancestral cult of the Torajan people of Suwalesi (Indonesia), animistic and ancestor-worshipping with immense funereal rites and amazing architecture... or it is the sound of a spiritual nightmare in four suites trampling through unknown terrain in your deepest subconcious. aVoid |
NORMANRECORDS : Oh yes, this one's a right beauty. A real beast of a record, a kind of metal Krautrock, similar to Circle in some ways but without the madman ramblings. An instrumental treat, with four long droning grooves (if that's possible). The best track is 'Woodchurch' which slowly collapes through a wall of distortion, but keeps up the rhythm throughout. The avant metal scene is very exciting right now, and even though I feel like I should be avoiding metal at my age (and quite possibly at any age judging by half the nonsense that is out there), there's something going on that just keeps dragging me back for more. Keep it comin'!
Richard. |
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NOBLEME "On me fait signe que j'ai des goûts de merde"
par Eric B., jeudi 8 mai 2008 à 12:13 | My laïfe / Musique Plusieurs personnes m'ont déjà dit que j'ai des goûts musicaux de merde. Alors j'ai décidé d'y rédiger une réponse, une bonne fois pour toute: J'en ai rien à faire. Je m'en fous complètement de l'opinion des gens sur ce que j'écoute. C'est pas dur à comprendre quand même. Je sais très bien que j'écoute des trucs qui sont vachement bizarres et qui, pour l'ensemble des gens, ressemblent à un bruit de moteur d'avion en marche. Eh ben c'est la vie. J'aime ça. Moi, je suis quelqu'un qui porte pas de jugements sur les goûts des autres. Contrairement à la techno, ce que j'écoute à des vertus musicales une fois qu'on s'y habitue. Je ne suis pas un hypocrite, moi, au moins (on me fait signe que si, ah..) Sur ce, après ce post court et inutile, je vous laisse avec du Aluk Todolo, qui doit être la musique la plus absurdément inutile que je possède dans ma bibliothèque musicale. Et oui, j'adore ce morceau, j'adore ce groupe, j'adore cet album, et j'écoute ça régulièrement . |
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DARKFACTORY: Aluk Todolo grają na tym albumie jakoś inaczej - za mało tutaj tego zepsucia, które jest na "Finsternis". Debiut jest zbyt żwawy, a konkretnie chodzi o numer "Obedience", który naprawdę świetnie się zapowiada, ale pewnym momencie następuje niezrozumiały dla mnie łomot, który jednak sprawia, że odbiór tego albumu jest słabszy od drugiego. Ostro zaczyna się "Burial Ground", ale na szczęście ten pisk jest tylko i wyłącznie na początku. Dalej to już pełna czarna magia. Jeszcze "Woodchurch" jest nieco dziwny, ale i tak zdecydowanie lepszy od pierwszego utworu. A w "Disease" pojawia się nawet jakiś szczątkowy wokal - oczywiście odpowiednio obrobiony (niczym z jakiegoś starego magnetofonu szpulowego). Jeszcze w którymś z kawałków (ciężko mi teraz wyłapać, w którym) pojawiają się upiorne okrzyki kobiety - aż ciary po plecach przechodzą. Mimo wszystko "Finsternis" podobał mi się bardziej, ale debiut też dobry. |
UTVÆR! : Their noisiest album (also their first), a pure display of krautrock repetitiveness that reminds of their Tony Conrad influence. While not as cyclical and compelling in delivery as Finsternis, this album deserves a listen mostly because of the first and last track, its harsh wall of sound with fast drumming will definitely attract the followers of the genre looking for some recent works. |
progarchives.com |
seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com |
rateyourmusic.com As far as I'm concerned there are no vocals on this peculiar record, yet even without devilish shrieks Aluk Todolo are able to evoke truly occult atmosphere. And they surely know how to employ lots of production means form various fields of rock music, including post rock, no wave and krautrock. In result we've got 4 instrumental tracks where various static noises go in hand with lazy guitar jams, occasional explosions of feedback and distortion. This multilayered and stoned noise rock has in fact more to do with Brainbombs than with any cooled down avant band, though it is driven by a completely non-metal percussion, borrowed from a forgotten Faust record. |
angelfire.com/vamp/litanies 2007 fut l'année des mariages insolites... et dans le genre "mariage sonore ambigu qui aurait pu mener au divorce dissonant et instantané mais qui est finalement une réussite totale" (et incluant un saignement de tympan en option), on ne fait pas mieux que "Descension"... Kraut-Rock vs. Black Metal dérangé... le tout avec des insertions zeuhl, no wave et industrielles... C'est pas n'importe quoi, ce truc. C'est lourd, c'est mécanique, c'est brumeux, c'est psychédélique, ça bouillonne constamment avant d'éclater sans crier gare, ça vous en jette plein la gueule (on reçoit des boulons sataniques en plein front) et pourtant, on en redemande. Trio français mystérieux, Aluk Todolo nous pond ici un premier album aussi obtus qu'excellent. On a affaire à de la très grande musique absurde et fucked-up, rendant hommage aux différents courants mentionnés ci-hauts, mais pavant aussi son chemin de haine vers quelque chose de résolument nouveau... quelque chose de maladif, de cauchemardesque, d'inqualifiable, d'innommable... De longues pièces en forme de lames de rasoir, des rythmiques lourdes, froides et hypnotiques, du fuzz en-veux-tu-en-v'là-t'en-veux-pas-MEURS, du noise gras et méchant, de la schizophrénie musicale non traité, de l'ambiant maladif anti-repos qui aurait très bien pu servir de fond sonore aux secteurs les plus inhospitaliers d'un asile de fous furieux, des montées hyper-répétitives et orgiaques vers quelque chose de toujours plus nébuleux, des notes de clavier aléatoires et pourtant foncièrement logiques, un marais urbain en phase terminale ; couvert à perpétuité par un smog millénaire et inhumain... Can, Magma, This Heat, Blut Aus Nord et Mayhem passés au malaxeur (pour notre plus grand bonheur !). Le but : faire une boisson impie qu'on offrira à l'Antechrist quand il viendra faire son p'tit tour... Impossible d'en dire plus. Il faut écouter, souffrir, aimer souffrir et écouter encore. |
marklosingtoday.wordpress.com
There’s been a fair amount of teeth gnashing and intermittent bots of throwing ourselves through the air against walls in our gaff since we finally get off our lazy hides and put this beauty on the turntable. The gnashing of teeth due in the main to discovering the small though painfully consequential fact that this lot have somehow managed to sneak past a release in the shape of their self titled two track 7” for Public Guilt – the blighters. While our strange re-acquaintance with the walls in our place are borne of the fact that we are utterly smitten by this colossal unholy sounding four track hybrid opus of kraut, dark psych and blood chilled industrialism. ‘Descension’ is the debut Aluk Todolo full length release – limited to just 500 vinyl copies via the rather tasty Riot Season imprint who are it has to be said garnering something of a reputation for being latent spotters of taste makers (in our gaff anyway) having just blown us away with the latest double vinyl outing for the very excellent Shit ’n’ Shine (a review is imminent) as well as offering safe haven for the of those Jap psych overlords Acid Mothers Temple as well as in recent memory outings for the Skull Defekts and Black Boned Angel (which I have to hear and now come highly recommended). The French trio who are made up of members of occultist / black metal ensembles previously unknown to us (now isn’t that familiar) Diamatregon and Vediog Svaor have in ’Descension’ delivered one of the early runners for psyche debut of the year. Loosening up on their black metal upbringing ’descension’ is grimly layered, the opening sequences of ’obedience’ envelope the listener in a sinew tightening tenseness routinely marked and scarred by the delicate drift of an apocalyptically monastic and bleak monochromatic backdrop before the frenzied scourge of hammer headed primordial kraut grooves are unleashed with blood letting intent. Unrelenting, inescapable and impeccably claustrophobic, this caustic armoury provides the setting for a serious power driven locked down head fuck of some measure beset with a raging frontal assault of howling feedback skree, acute no wave dialects and doom lashed foreboding and retribution. The ice dripped looping skin jangling paranoia of ‘burial ground’ drops the temperature to near chilling, ominous and skulking this heavily set bleak and blankly slice of fraught post punk taps disturbingly in to the monolithic atmospheres of Joy Division at their most overtly hollowed and here we are thinking ’dead souls’ and ’decades’ whilst intermittently being subjected to scorch marks resulting from hostile fuzz furies that neatly blends into….. …’woodchurch’ which annoyingly our spell checker keeps trying to change to Woodchuck (whatever happened to them?) is as eerie as it gets is replete with life force evaporating drone montages that mooch restlessly like some kind of pulsating sonic black hole sucking dry any semblance of light – think LaBradford in a face off with Growing. Its left to the parting ’disease’ to provide the set with its curtain closing centrepiece – deliciously set off and primed by some stunning dust ridden fuzzed up snaking blues accents as though a smoking Bill Horist had lifted some neat side winding riff tricks from Ry Cooder before being dragged backwards into darkening oppressive haze of stricken industrial treated drone dub collages whipped straight out of the arse pocket of an early career Roy Montgomery. Fierce some stuff. All at once brooding and brutal ‘descension’ is an uncompromising ceremony of caustic generic engineering and an absolute must have record collection addition. |
| xulknowledge.blogspot.com Ever wandered the streets at 4am after a night of drinking, attempted rape and vomiting? I thought so. And have you ever wondered to yourself during your unstable staggering mission to find a quick way home, or maybe, a cheap hooker to bed up with for the night, what on earth would the soundtrack be to this wonderful evening? This is your answer. This is your answer to alot of things in your life. This the the backing music to the scumbag cruising through the night, looking for his version of "fun", drugs, booze, whores, maybe some minor one sided violence, and undoubtedly a great spot to shit in public for all to see. This is perfect. The next time you're getting ready to hit the town for a night out, throw this on and inspire yourself for scummery. Just make sure you shave your pubic hair so you don't leave anything behind at the crime scene. |
progarchives.com |
rockarkivaren.com |
alessandrorusignuolo |
