Posts Tagged ‘review’

runes order – the hopeless day

The Runes Order, aka Claudio Dondo, this demanding and ambitious chapter of its saga takes advantage of the valuable collaboration of Trevor (Northgate and Camerata Mediolanense) and the result, The Hopeless Day, may easily be defined as a pearl in dark-cold-electronic context. Electronic rides, analogic carpets and dark patterns properly sampled with the inevitable cinematographic touch, that is justified by Dondo’s passion for cult-horror cinema.

Despite being massively present, technology does not seem to belong to this experience: the whole disc wrapped around me a strange sense of pleasant retro and masochistic sadness, like a long and exceeded regret refusing the current realities.

Almost fully instrumental, The Hopeless Day, draws myriad of origami and listening to every nuance it seems to show a different layer of its skin, which in a fair and tenacious way tries to resist to the lashing that the modern era’s reserves, ruthlessly.

The Runes Order travel in a parallel dimension, suspended without a clear identity, harmonic and negative, where electronic dominates but don’t sum, demeans or simplify the whole concept, indeed, it traces tortuous and agonizing paths.

After each listening, you may find yourself facing a forgotten or never explored street, superficially omitted, as if a serial killer waiting for you just around the corner at the bottom of the road, with you completely wondering.

The track list presents After The Passing, a cover by Malombra masterfully performed by Daniela Bedeski (member of  Camerata), real icing on the cake of this album in which cold, horror, retro, nihilistic and apocalyptic atmospheres stand out. It’s hard to summarize with a few words, but extremely fascinating to try, as the expectation of a new detector listening.

Make your own this gem, listen to it in the dark… looking over your shoulder.

My Dying Bride - Evinta

Evinta is not technically a new My Dying Bride album, but rather a collection of new compositions, a kind of symphonic-orchestral reinterpretation of all that the British band conceived and realized in the last 20 years.

The final result, however, can also induce the keenest fan to be in front of an unpublished work: no more guitars to weave heavy, claustrophobic and doom atmosphere, no more screaming vocals, but piano, violins and keyboards to lead the listener in a gothic and dramatic journey, taken in hand by Aaron theatrical and sententious vocalise. The presence of a female voice (the french mezzo-soprano Lucie Roche) does not seem to reassure but rather embark us on a dreamlike dimension outside the musical context.

Maybe someone might perceive the lack of inspiration of the band, but after all the experiment raises curiosity and the charm and elegance of some compositions is undeniable.

Suitable for the end credits of a tragic noir gothic film, at times appears to be close to less experimental Elend , in others (Lilies Of Bent With Tears, especially) easily assimilable to Arcana, but all the work deserves to be heard until the end despite the palpable danger of getting tired, just carried by a feeling of vanity’s sake.

The Distance, Busy With Shadows is one of the best episodes of this intense and pretentious work while the final A Hand Of Awful Rewards is a gem that turns heads and hopes, where even the least sensitive of us is likely to shed tears.