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Monsieur Crane’s music has a rare electronic energy and powerful depth that strikes the heart with all the evocative scope of a cult cinematic soundtrack. From the first moment we heard the freshness and spontaneity of Monsieur Crane’s synth, TONN Recordings was hooked.
After “D’une Pierre deux Tombes”, a funereal and introspective album released in 2021, Opéra Multi Steel returns with its thirteenth studio album: “Les Passions tristes”. The group remains faithful to the sound of the founding instruments that have made it unique since its beginnings. The evolution started on the previous album with the use of more electro rhythms and sequences continues. The pride of place remains given to the vocal melodies, synthetic pads and mechanical backgrounds created by the three musicians and which are a trademark of Opéra Multi Steel, sometimes tinged with recorders that sometimes bring a medieval hint. The band therefore evolves with constancy, without however denying its origins. That said, the music, more up-tempo than on the previous album, does not engender a frenzied melancholy. OMS has always known how to keep distance from the members respective obsessions by mitigating them with a veil of irony and by sprinkling their songs with occasional or referential sound effects, some of them are directly linked to childhood, history, literature, cinema… OMS remains for its members the crucible in which they can mix their common or individual inclinations and their personal stories… The tragedy of some themes is never exempt from a certain dose of lightness in the tone… Some tracks could be easily danceable (Dites-nous, Tout en Tous, Tombés à Terre, Le Soleil est parti…) Some others are developing some more melancholic mood (A nos Moments perdus, Les Toiles…). Au grand Jamais with Catherine Marie as lead vocalist will bring back some memories from a previous side-project of OMS members called “O Quam Tristis”.
The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol that is lost in the mists of time and that was already found in ancient Egypt and China. It takes the form of a snake biting its tail (this is the meaning of the word in Greek). An esoteric figure of a cyclical conception of the world and of life, it expresses at the same time the ideas of movement, of continuity, and of Eternal Return. This figure spontaneously imposed itself on Usher and Chelsea to name this album of covers, each of them representing a stage of the constitutive journey of their identity. This is not a tribute or contract album, but rather an ancient desire that has finally come to fruition, a sort of puzzle mixing different spaces and temporalities that they have tried to reinvest. Norma Loy has always practiced the exercise of the cover, the most significant example being David Lynch’s “Heaven”, with multiple and very different versions, each one indicating in its own way the vision of the group in its evolution. “OUROBOROS” reflects the diversity of Norma Loy’s influences, focusing on the early 80′s. “Night to Forget” by Factrix, for example, was already cited by the band as a reference in the first article published in New Wave in 1981. It gathers indifferently famous artists (Bowie, Cohen, Velvet Underground) and more underground formations (Tuxedomoon, Suicide, Coil, TG, etc.) in reappropriated versions. We also find a new reinterpretation of Romance, first track recorded by the band but dating back to the COIT BERGMAN (Usher/Chelsea) duo of 1978, and already appearing on other Norma Loy productions. This is a perfect example of the Ouroboros or Eternal Return, where the return to the point of origin integrates the path travelled. A careful listening reveals moreover within the covers, quotations of other titles of Bowie, Suicide, the Doors, Joy Division or Norma Loy themselves. |
