We hadn't seen Diary of Dreams in Paris for fifteen yearst. After Rosa Crux three days earlier, Persona Grata had concocted a week full of dark and beautiful rarities in the french capital. There's no opening act, which is probably the price you have to pay when you book a German festival headliner in a country where it's less popular. That's not necessarily a bad thing: it doesn't start too early or too late and leaves plenty of time for the evening's stars. Venus Fatale's DJ set gets us into the mood, though, and we warm up with some Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb to get us into the mood.
DIARY OF DREAMS
When you think of Diary of Dreams, you think of a deep, gravelly voice projecting all its affliction in every vocal line. You imagine electronic music with a few heavy guitars and a piano, crushed by all the sadness in the world. Diary of Dreams is dark and beautiful. Adrian Hates, the tormented mastermind behind the darkwave project, is dark. You never see him smile in the promo photos. Even his name is dark. On stage, however, it's a different story. Adrian loves, Adrian smiles, Adrian shares. It's always a pleasure to observe this paradox in the headliners of the German dark scene: while their art is dark, they have a sense of entertainment and showmanship. They make us clap our hands, they hold out the mike, the lights highlight them and the sound is perfect. In short, they have the know-how to put on a catchy show that keeps the audience involved.
Viva la Bestia, one of the recent Melancholin's flagship tracks, quickly draws you in, its heaviness and aggression not detracting from its heady chorus. Hates' voice is flawless, gloomy, depressed and infectious. Generally speaking, the tracks take on a new power live. Although Diary of Dreams is a solo project, touring with a full band brings that extra percussion and bite, and several times the music flirts with industrial metal (Sinferno, Epicon, The Plague).
Diary of Dreams is one of those projects that you can lose track of for a few years, miss an album or two, and then suddenly catch up without ever feeling lost. The quality is constant, as is the richness, which avoids any feeling of weariness and guarantees the coherence of the whole. The essential tracks from the last twenty-five years coexist harmoniously, and just when you might be lulled into a routine, a spirited rendition of She and her Darkness, for example, is enough to capture the full attention of the breathless audience. At the back of the venue, an older couple embrace. So cute. Maybe it was "their song". In the pit, people dance to the melancholy anthem Decipher Me. On stage, Adrian Hates pampers his audience with a theatrical, intense and poetic concert lasting over an hour and a half, where the sinister mixes with dreamy flashes of light and introspection with the desire to shake your booty to all these elegiac complaints. Let's hope we won't have to wait fifteen other years before next time.
