Best of compilation from one of pioneers of Belgian darkwave / coldwave / synthwave. Geert Coppens and Peter Bonne started the band AUTUMN in 1981 and in 1982 they moved to TWILIGHT RITUAL project who recorded 9 albums and 2 singles. In 1985, Peter Bonne aka Chrismar Chayell founded A Split Second with Marc Ickx, and TR stayed as second plane for years. The iconic album RITUALS, including the hit CLOSED CIRCUIT was a rare item to found in the 80′s and 90′s.
Twilight Ritual was born in Geert’s mind during the first Autumn years. It was building integrity, clearer identity, admittance of mystery and surreal impressions. During Autumn recording sessions, musical style and experiment varied strongly, which is recognized in the various tape releases. However, some tracks had clearly more ‘spirit’ or ‘personality’ than others. It became clear that a new project was born out of Autumn work : Twilight Ritual.
Geert Coppens and Peter Bonne have been involved in many different projects, including many different musical styles, about which you can read more on other pages on this site, e.g the Micrart Group story, the Autumn history or within the A Split Second history.
The spirit of Twilight Ritual lingers on beneath the work of Autumn through A Split Second. The work of Twilight Ritual is diverse, yet concise. The Twilight Ritual work in the eighties inspired many other musicians, and became known throughout the world.
2 x CD / Digital Album
Active for about a year, Скубут [Skubut] is the 80s influenced Cold Wave / Post-Punk moniker of Russian young musician Mikhail Shlepin based in Vienna, Austria.
Cold, yet equally poignant, filled with dark, beautiful, aching sorrowfulness, ably blends the sharp, edgy iciness and minimalism ala Lebanon Hanover with the distinctive, intense melancholy and emotional turmoil of Russian ‘doomer’ bands.
First track “Акт самоубийства” deals with hidden obsessions that unravel in a suicidal fantasy realized alone in a bathroom with blood dripping down the walls, while someone knocks on the door, too late to help.
A seductively dark and penetrating spell exhales from the numb meander of the dense droning mists built by an ominous, rumbling bleak bass line, awash by looming, humming eddies of icy synth, whose persistent pulsating morbid obscurity is scratched by cascading slivers of trembling and ethereal, tinkling guitar reverberations, charged by crispy claps and quick muffled percussive patterns, drawing perpetual melancholic edges around morose, deep male vocals releasing shame, guilt, and pain into the nocturnal subconscious desires of an eternal, haunted peace, leaving us ultimately at the mercy of deafening silence.
CD / Digital Album
“D’une Pierre deux Tombes” is the twelfth Opera Multi Steel’s studio album. It includes 8 tracks in its vinyl version and 12 tracks as cd format. For this last opus, the band turns back as a trio, in the original line-up of its beginnings, namely Patrick L. Robin, Franck Lopez and Catherine Marie. In 2018, Catherine, Patrick and Franck lost their respective mothers. This album was therefore partly conceived as a posthumous tribute to two dear ones, hence its title in French which takes the form of both a pun and a macabre observation.
All the tracks, even if they still contain what makes the sound and the particular style of the band are imbued with a sadness and a nostalgia arguably more present. The theme of death and vanity is more powerful than ever (Cimeterre, L’Après-Mort…). Opéra Multi Steel develops in this album a bit darker music than usual. Melodies and vocal harmonies are always favored, supported on several tracks by Future Pop sounds of strings and electronic rhythms which reinforce the tragic mood of the concept (L’Annonce, La Nuit des Doutes, Intercession…).
The album, in its cd version, is punctuated after each track by the sound of the old cuckoo clock that remained alone on the walls of the empty house of Patrick and Franck’s mother after her disappearance as the witness of a persistent presence. We can also hear the last phone vocal message from his mother to Patrick. This cathartic album, over the songs, takes the form of a sound testament aimed at exorcising fate and facilitating resilience.
The cover artwork, made by Brazilian designer Hernan Czauski with photos taken by the band’s members in several ancient French cemeteries, features details of 19th century sculpted tombstones that evoke both the eternal Silence of the Grave, the Fidelity beyond Death and the inconsolable Sorrows.
LP / CD / Digital Album
Sorry, Heels were born in Frosinone (Italy) in 2010. After two self-produced EPs, “Wasted” (2013) and “Distances” (2014), their first album, “The Accuracy of Silence”, was released on the Finnish label Gothic Music Records in 2015. “She” (Shades of Sound Records/Wave Records) is their new album due out in 2021.
Various line-up changes mark a radical change in Sorry, Heels’ sound, abandoning rock standards and diverting their compositions towards electronic music, while maintaining references and sounds linked to new wave and early post-punk. “She” is imbued with dream and synth pop influences with ethereal and suffused atmospheres, it’s relaxed and sensual.
Sorry, Heels’ new album “She” is a work entirely dedicated to the love journey of a woman who faces infatuation, falling in love, disappointment and frustration. Both the lyrics and the sounds were written in an attempt to evoke all the various stages she has gone through.
Starting from infatuation (“Through the End”) through passion (“She Burns”, first single), rejection (“Something Real”), obsession (“Follow Signs” and “The Spell’s Ballad”), the loneliness of broken dreams (“My Doll’s House” and “Another Lapse”), repentance (“The Void”). And then it inexorably arrives at the acceptance that nothing will change: “The End of Desires”.
CD / Digital Album
Behind shuttered windows and closed doors, our distant memories are slowly drifting into the void of reality. Thrown upside down in the air, we are floating between rational thinking and chaos. There is no present, past, or future, just this elusive feeling of eternal loneliness. The flowers bloom and fade away an infinite number of times, across infinite time and space. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. Our attempts to break the circle bring us to the place where it all started. Forever lost in the maze of life, unseen and unknown, this very moment is already forgotten.
“The End Is the Beginning” is the debut album of post-punk/gothic rock project Mirror of Haze from Oslo, Norway. Recorded in isolation during the pandemic months of 2020, it captures the mood of this strange and unprecedented time of modern history. From the first song Mirror of Haze sets up both anxious and ethereal atmosphere, filled with reverb-drenched dreamy guitars, driving bass lines, rhythmic drum machine beats, and commanding vocals. In the guitar driven sound of the record you can hear musical textures reminiscent of acts from previous decades such as The Chameleons and The Fields Of The Nephilim, and modern artists like Drab Majesty and Then Comes Silence.
Lyrically, the album builds on eternal philosophical questions of life and death in the dystopian post apocalyptic setting, taking inspiration from the striking imagery of “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot.
CD / Digital Album
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