Alcest – Écailles de Lune [2010]

posted by Zamo on September 7, 2010

Alcest – Écailles de Lune [2010]

Label : Prophecy Productions

Genre: Black Metal (early), Black Metal/Shoegaze (later)

A dream. A world filled with beautiful stories. A world where you can be yourself. A world in which you can escape every time you want to. A world of dream.

This is the short story about Neige`s new album.

Due to the fact that this past period I toyed a lot with post-rock, it was easy for me to tell about the influences of this genre in the category that the project Alcest was put in the beginning: black metal.

The combination of these two genres is more that welcome and thus further, Neige`s voice can be considered as being the element between these two, a bridge between them.

“Écailles de Lune [Part I]” begins in a way or another, more or less, as being a post-rock, and continues to transform itself into black metal. When Neige begins to make his presence noticed it can be said that these two genres fade away, all the attention being focused on his hypnotic voice.

It happened only a few times , and I can name here: Dead Can Dance (also Brandan Perry), Ulver, Arcana (also Peter Bjärgö).

I loved how he managed to put the same lyrics in two different ways. One more post-rock, the other more black metal. “Écailles de Lune [Part II]” is more black metal, and Neige`s voice is the same that we all were used to in the project Peste Noir.

Once “Percées de Lumière” started, the intensity of the instrumental reaches the apex, being the peak song from the album.

“Abysses”, as the title sais, takes you to the edge of the abyss and then throws you down into it to capture his essence. In that free fall you know you are safely carried by the echoes and the drops of water that can be heard, much like Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole: a long journey to the bottom, the only difference is that in “Abysses” there is no bottom.

In “Solar Song” there is nothing else than the post-rock rhythms and Neige`s voice, with no lyrics. Just plain sounds. Much like a very good part of Dead Can Dance, and song with only Lisa Gerrard`s voice. Just listening to “Solar Song” you can feel the solar explosions and in the mean time you can feel yourself floating in space, relaxing yourself to the beautiful sight that the instrumental offers you.

“Sur l’Océan Couleur de fer” carries you on the cool waves into a world of dream.

The album from head to toe is a combination of colors in a somewhat sober environment, in a way or another. A contradiction of feelings, a variety of open doors that lead to worlds filled with unknown, but at the same time so familiar. From the beginning I thought this album seems to be a woman caught in the toils of her dream. The ending seems to be quite unfinished. I was expecting more after the last play, I was expecting that the 42 minutes of the album to continue, to never end.

However, I can only say that this album is a doorway through a world full of unknown, a world that awaits at your feet, a world that is ready at any time to capture you the second you press “play”.

You can find the review in Romanian here: Review Alcest – Ecailles de Lune (Ro)

Author: Seelenlos

Rating 9 / 10