COURROUX: Ii (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

There is no stopping Fabien Guy, musical Cerberus with his different projects (Courroux, Los Ojos Carnivoros and Liqueur Brune). But here, no mythology, the artist, very real, is not the guardian of the underworld but rather the one of an inspiration and a musical research which seems to be limitless. Last year, he came back with his most "joyful" project, Los Ojos Carnivoros with "EP3" and here he is again like Fantomas under the features of Courroux.

The album takes the same road as the previous one, like the one on the cover which takes the same mountainous theme. Courroux always proposes a clever mixture essentially instrumental at the border of several styles. The well named 'A Road To Anywhere', aerial, dreamy, is embodied in a kind of endless melody which hypnotizes by its minimalist repetition at first then densifies. The synthetic aspect is blurred by the final guitar solo which makes the transition with 'Trapped (We're All)', an dynamic track with futuristic and robotic keyboards.

If the impression of repetition in the tracks can appear, Fabien Guy like a painter colors them with enough pigments to avoid any weariness. The introductory samples of 'Oil On Canvas' bring an immersive side to the most rock and progressive track of the disc. Like a spreading oil stain, the progression is relatively ominous and haunting with its prominent martial drums and repetitive riffs. It also calls upon references from 80/90s, notably in 'Dance For Ufos' with its electro house structure which borrows from Daft Punk.

At the end of this album, two pieces stand out: 'Astilla' first of all is the only sung title, insufflating by its interpretation a melancholic side at the limit of the despair in the verses counterbalanced by a more luminous chorus illuminated by notes of celestial keyboards. But it is especially 'A l'Orient Eternel' which holds the attention by its more organic aspect, with the appearance of the acoustic then of the sparkling and symphonic synths which form a whole closing the album in a very beautiful way, bringing a glimmer of hope in this kind of credits of end. Some notes of guitars intervene in an almost impromptu way in the last seconds, and one would have liked that they take over, in a more developed way to form a beautiful solo.

We can see this record as a kind of itinerary of a solitary artist on a sinuous road symbolized by an always present search to leave the beaten tracks. If one can greet this freedom of tone, composition, creation by going to the essential, it always remains this small bitter taste, this feeling of not having enough and of frustration to miss some additional developments. Nevertheless, the record, by its melancholy, its nostalgia, its reminders to childhood, is certainly a beautiful tribute to those who built the atypical artist. - Official website

COURROUX

II

AUTOPRODUCTION

ROCK