"At last, more than three years after the magnificent "L'Empreinte", here is the new album from my favorite Society: "Romanciel". The first impression concerns the artistic creativity of the group: it's astonishing how high it has been maintained throughout an almost forty-year career. In fact, I can say it right away, "Romaciel" is one of the best albums of theirs, in the field of a discography that is filled with beautiful works.
Then comes the great pleasure to find again all the elements that make?their style?unique, immediately recognizable and, at once, new and fresh every time: Pascal Godjikian's extraordinary expressiveness and vocal skills, JimB's sharp metallic electric guitar, Patrice Babin's stormy drums and delicate small percussions, Christophe Gautheur's versatile keyboards and S¨¦bastien Desloges's bass and violin.
Fascinating, as well, are the suggestions to which La Stpo's? world refers: the artistic avant-garde of the twentieth century for instance? (Dadaism, Surrealism, Expressionism) or some masters of modern music (King Crimson, Pere Ubu and David Thomas' projects are the first names that come to me).
The album opens with the twenty minute long "Roman" and it is the violin of the latest arrival Desloges (he joined the group eleven years ago) that gives an important contribution to the atmosphere of unusual lightness of this first track. Along with it we have soft blows of flute and ethereal openings of keyboards. It reminds me of? Kandinsky or Klee's most abstract paintings. But lightness can easily evaporate and leave the place to gravity and harmony can become dissonance just like a clear sky can suddenly cloud over, tear with lighting and explode with thunder. La Stpo's songs are kind of like this, they are changing and surprising.
Pascal Godjikian's lyrics, that often take inspiration from the dream world, are well suited to the music with their surrealistic, bizarre, non consequential features. They speak a language of their own. Actually, since the very beginning of the story,? language has always been a reason of great interest for him, even of experimentation with the creation of neologisms and new ways of combining the letters together. The second track gives us a nice chance to approach a very special "Dictionnaire".
"La Diminu¨¦e" has weird, theatrical tones alternating with tender sounds of twittering and magnificent lyrical breakthroughs.
The mood changes drastically in the fourth and last song,?"Rien qu'en Ciel".??It's a twenty-four-minute performance, wonderful and frightening at the same time, that unveils a dramatic scenery, a kind of desperate cry while "a higher and higher wall erases the sky".
It's a dark and haunting final but, despite of it, in the silence that follows the end of the music, a little smile finds its way and sweetens the lips and the soul of the listener. This is what happens in front of a work of art or a spectacle of nature. And this music is beautiful, imaginative and free just like a successful picture or like the flight of the birds that paint the sky with their wonderful parade."
