posted 10/23/2008 (Thu) @ 08:00 am
>>> Music Reviews
Les Fragments de la Nuit - Musique Du Crépuscule (2008)
Modern Classical / Experimental
The Exorcist’s Ring
- Eveil des Fées
- Assault
- La Ronde des Fées
- Entre Ciel et Fer
- Devenons Demain I
- Devenons Demain II
- Solitude
- Solarisation
- La Chambre des Fées
- Soleils Noirs pour Lune Blanche
- La Mélodie de la Tête
- Le Château Enchanté
- Le Scarabée Bleu
- Soleils Noirs pour Lune Blanche - Tango
- Les Eaux Dormantes
- Alpha du Centaure
Musique du Crépuscule’s album art, depicting a moon swaddled in clouds and a starry nighttime sky, encapsulates perfectly the dark, messy, stringed instrument bliss delivered by French neo-classicists Les Fragments de la Nuit.
Their music, the dynamic range of which spans from near silence to a flurrying tempest of oily violin and gut-wrenching, heavy piano chords, instills a sense of dark beauty. The pop song length helps the medicine go down; fourteen of sixteen tracks are under four minutes long.
The achingly pretty “Eveil des Fées” begins Musique du Crépuscule with a lazy chorus of fairies awakening to the plink of a music box. Follow-up “Assault” takes a different route. It brims with a hopeless, violent urgency, kissing cousin to the Requiem for a Dream theme. Pasted against broken piano runs, dire violin trills amplify “Solarisation” with that same unsettling Hitchcockian, film score feel, insistent yet contemplative. Picture someone (sepia or B&W, preferably) shambling, makeshift weapon in hand, down a darkened hallway to “Entre Ciel et Fer.” Pretty easy, eh?
Plenty of groups walk along this gothic classical, yet vaguely still “rock” tightrope. Take the DADGAD lovin’ psych-folk troupe Espers, for instance: deserted playground spooky, but with a folk/rock undercurrent to keep the attention of modern radio listeners. Les Fragments de la Nuit’s chamber of fragmented horror scores will most certainly hit the spot.
With October more than halfway complete and Halloween fast approaching, it only makes sense to keep on the lookout for something suitably spooky to crank on All Hallows Eve. Les Fragments de la Nuit’s Musique du Crépuscule will tickle your inner goth (no really, the kind you can show to friends, not the entirely dweeby sort which relies upon hair dye) and fill your dreams with night.
Wish that this night were not so fragmented? You may also enjoy the reversed string quartet Invert; DADGAD lovin’ psych-folk troupe Espers; The Lucidity Project from the like-minded Michael Halaas; or the washed-out, messy, barroom squall of post-rockers Dirty Three. If lengthy pieces cause you to tremble with fear, check out the Three’s most recent, Cinder.
Links
Download (Sirens Sound) (support art, pay the musicians if you like it)
Myspace
Tags: experimental, genre blending, Les Fragments de la Nuit, Musique Du Crépuscule, neo-classical, post-rock, silent film scores, slowcore
