[Reviewed by: Iaha Crax]
Old Europa Cafe released Negru Pvlse’s debut, ‘Madeira’, 13 years ago. In the meantime, these two noise crafters have worked on several releases for their main projects Moljebka Pvlse and Negru Voda.
For those already acquainted with ‘Madeira’, a punishing dark-drone wall, ‘Fervere’ should be coming as another rewarding gift to be opened in the inner cellar. All the more for the others in search for chaste and radiant ambiances.
‘Fervere’ includes 9 untitled tracks, the visualistic spectrum of which is only suggested by the disc cover, displaying an untrodden path between fir trees in a wintry wood. The music ranges among different styles of dark electronics, integrating industrial ambient and drone within power electronics and old-school industrial forms.
The descent takes place somewhere near the Lascaux caves, and we are driven by sheep mumblings inside obscure reclusion labyrinths; drops of icy water freeze instantly as the mind wanders through these crevices; pensive, still noises carryi away our futile daily thoughts. It is here, inside this womb-like, tactile, animistic darkness, that man seeks the negation of his humanity.
Negru Pvlse crafts its light-sensitive sonatas on the background of a post-industrialized dichotomy between artificial, digitalized softness and the natural occurrence of raw matter. The essential rhythm on track II is exposed to a sundry aestheticism, that facilitates the listener’s reaction to a common level of reception. The cave ambient from the beginning allegedly receives inside its protective space this machinist perversion, through broken, conductive rhythms of fabric-like apologetics.
When contracting such a form of noise-dermatitis, the modern spirit, put to somnolence by infertile ideologies, is awaken to a bipolar, friendly environment, industry vs mineral regnum. This passive resistance to matter favors a contraction within the confinement of our conformity, which progressively gets us out of the static state of simple existence. Apart from character, which is mainly a system of defence for the persona, matter stands for an image of our energy that once released starts to radiate, like the pulsating beams on track IV, until it reaches a proper frequency allowing stabilization, and thus self-control. The titillating mantra-like sound displayed on track IV should suffice to develop an instagram of one’s halo hyperbola.
With ‘Fervere’ Negru Pvlse renews timeless researches into meta-sounds, begun with pioneers such as Pierre Schaeffer or Pierre Henry , and rejoined by the more contemporary Xenakis or Vivenza. Track V is even reminiscent of Ligeti’s ‘Atmospheres’, treating frequence and tonality as independent matter with free progression. Along the same lines, the following track exhibits this artistic XX century classical vision of destrucuralism and revivification of old frames into new musical paradigms. And if the above words are not enough to denote a truly unique album, track VII ranges among the musical hints of God’s favorite composer, Bach, now re-written by the swedish artists in an updated fugue, a sonata/ fugue further developed on track VIII, slightly gaining the spectre of a factory organum with no less a post-religious appearance.
The concluding track IX marks the outcoming excretion of the former distilled sounds into a ravishing power electronics introspection. Its blatant and potlatch spending sets an indictment to all that treats music outside of fever.
‘Fervere’ is a convulsive disc, but tamed to such an extent that it could gain even the audience of contemporary classical music. Properly anchored in this era of steel and concrete, it seems fitting to describe it with a quote by the first (and single) dadaist, Tristan Tzara: “He would rather petrify the gust instead of give himself away to the softness”.
Santa Sangre 