Hoof Tar

Urfaust has come down to earth. And after his brush with the dark infinities of the cosmos, the band has decided to return to its old clothes, particularly those of the alcoholic tramp who has become a mystic, where he was quicker to commit petty theft. Or almost. As if to emphasise a kind of cycle that takes shape again after touching the heavens and becoming irradiated. With Teufelgeist, he's gone back to his old, quasi-ambient plans, reviving the ragged hermit or the bad beggar and highwayman who had disappeared from our field of vision a decade or so ago. And yet he was nourished by all his peregrinations, far away in the firmament, and came back no less appeased. His use of keyboards has become fuller and more solemn.

But it's the medieval Urfaust we're talking about here, returning to a form of piety and devotion that the Brabant duo had in their early days, with Der freiwillige Bettler as the firmament, but gorged with the mysticism of the previous decade, in a duller version, lit by a simple candle. An organ is featured on both parts of this single, which lasts just over eighteen minutes and is considered as such - the remixes on the CD version accompanying the vinyl in its beautiful case bring the total to half an hour of music. The organ leads the way, along with some simplistic power chords on Hoof Tar, setting the tone for the funeral procession to which we are invited. Urfaust's motifs are as repetitive as ever, and there's no sign of any evolution in the subject matter, apart from a slight, furtive acceleration in the second half. We prefer to highlight its haunting side here. This is undoubtedly where the Dutch are at their best: in their ability to grab you, not to say haunt you, with simple music based on a few chords repeated ad nauseam. Something that could be compared to the most austere doom metal bands, both in its slow tempi and in its ability to tirelessly plough the same furrow, without deviating from its trajectory.

Genuflection and self-pity are the key words here, and the lamenting side of the band's charm is back, but with the mysticism of The Constellatory Practice. So, while the circle seems to have come full circle, it's nonetheless nourished by the various paths the band has travelled. IX's vocals are as poignant as ever, with haunting incantations that remind you of your human condition. This is clearly what makes - and always will make - the difference with Urfaust. It's a song that's always on the edge, but which will pierce even the most hardened of hearts, and which depicts both this pain and this sadness, with a pestilential breath added to the fumes of incense mixed with the fumes of alcohol. Darkness returns to Urfaust, or Urfaust returns to darkness, with its sense of inexorability and inevitability. These are the laments of a man who knows that there is no truth other than death. He is Cain Marchenoir, - for non french reafer, this a character from Leon Bloy's The Desperate -, who is unable to rediscover his faith when he retires to the Carthusian monastery, where he abandons all his rage and anger. In this, I can't help but draw a slight parallel with Einsiedler, even if the madness that inhabited the hermit is no longer in evidence and has clearly given way to renunciation, as if he has gone through the looking glass with time.

It's a renunciation that's as cryptic as it is mortuary. And that's what makes this work so special, its ritualistic, repetitive quality as hypnotic as it is touching. Even if it doesn't necessarily shine through on first listen, there are plenty of reasons to let yourself be penetrated by these odes, which seem to have come from an obscure age and are expressed in a particular, haunting way. For it will remain a constant in Urfaust to set such human feelings to music, giving them that ambivalent prism between ugliness and beauty. For there is something fundamentally beautiful that emanates from this music, even if it seems to herald a new dark age, an age in which all propensity for joy and happiness will have disappeared under a blanket of lead and grime, wandering endlessly, bending our backs in the face of so much relentlessness in our now miserable lives.

Originally written on https://lesdansesnocturnes.blogspot.com