The French-Occitan folk outfit Stille Volk’s second album “Ex-uvies” is one strange, beautiful hybrid. The eccentric Pyrenees folk sound is still present, but worked over with a whole assortment of outside influences like prog, death metal, industrial, noise, and psychedelic rock. This time out, rock percussion and heavy bass lines form the backbone of the music, and a prominent role is reserved for the electric guitar.
The songs vary greatly, each driven by its own internal logic. The first track, “Zoopathia,” has a psychedelic pop vibe, with subtle rock guitar and percussion, a folksy hook, and an unexpected left-field finale. The next two tracks, “Ténébrante azure” and “Chimères” are pastoral songs filtered through rock textures, electro beats, and broken metal guitar lines. The beautiful “Selena Koronna” is a guitar-and-woodwind-driven song in the traditional style, while its companion piece, the fun “Luna Mecanica,” cuts a bloody swath through epic folk rock, death metal, industrial, and the noise outlying these genres. The band follows this pastiche with the obnoxiously aggressive electro-metal-folk slog “Théâtrophone abscons.” The final proper song, “Exuvie bizarre” is a buffet of progressive rock, melodic metal, and sonorous traditional music.
“Ex-uvies” is a curious experience, a marriage of the rural with the urban, the ancient with the contemporary. It is also surprisingly dark. It’s like hearing traditional music severed from the place of its origins, broken down and reassembled for a modern audience wholly alienated from the wilderness. Every time I listen to it I get this jarring, contradictory image of pastoral fields superimposed on a postindustrial cityscape.
Note: this review is edited and considerably reworked from the original, which can be found at http://www.ssmt-reviews.com
-James Slone
VITALS:
Release: 1998
Label: Holy Records
Avantgenre: Folk Hybrid
Duration: 43:13
Origin: France
Official site: None
Review online since: 31.08.2007 / 02:17:30
TRACKLIST:
01 – Zoopathia
02 – Ténébrante Azurée
03 – Chimères
04 – Selena Koronna
05 – Luna Mecanica
06 – Théâtrophone Abscons
07 – Exuvie Bizarre
08 – Dans I’…
Leave a Reply