Here, we love spectres, from thundering, grimacing poltergeists to discreet ghosts whose presence can only be guessed. That's what attracts us to Contrevents. The young duo may not know it, but they're haunted - just look at the cover of their eponymous debut EP: if that picture doesn't try to capture the soul of its subject, we'll be damned! With its electronic music wandering between ambient, trip-hop and even a few noise and industrial touches, Contrevents explicitly quotes Alain Damasio and his novel La Horde du Contrevent and is inspired by the future of our planet, their eco-anxiety instantly resurfacing its share of spectres, those of everything that has already disappeared but also of everything that is about to be lost in the current and future ecological disasters.
You've been warned: we're not going to party. Contrevents can be seen as the evolution of Arche, the electro/ambient side-project of Maxime Ingrand, who also plays keyboards and guitar in the post-rock band Lost in Kiev, whose last album already took a more synthetic direction, haunted by environmental issues. He has teamed up with Paul Void (Stamp, Al Qasar, Crève Cœur) to form a complementary duo: one in charge of melodies and setting melancholy atmospheres, the other, with his more chaotic and noisy background, adds nuisance, tension and percussion (the panicked finale of Entrer dans la Douleur). The result is a subtle balancing act that we enter gradually with Magnetic Waves, which takes the time to envelop us in its contemplative, futuristic electronic haze.
Contrevents oscillates between moods, but it's when the duo cools the atmosphere that we prefer them, as on the ghostly Dreamer's Sleep, disturbed by a few percussions and ethereal notes. It's beautiful because it's sad, because we savour the mix between the anguish provoked by the organic percussion and the more resigned melody. Just when you thought you could relax at the start of Eau-Forte, with its almost danceable rhythm, the second half of the track imposes a funereal tone of low-lying strings, as if to say "look at the rubble of the cemetery that serves as our world".
Light filters through, of course, and Contrevents love nuance... but the tendency on this EP is to darken the subject matter. The tracks start out contemplative and soothing, but as they develop they become more chaotic and even oppressive, their soul thickened by a guitar that gives substance to their anguish. The finale of Dislocation is a good illustration of this approach, with its muffled sound that ends the album on a pessimistic note. With elegance, Contrevents plays with the contrasts between an almost reassuring, polished synthetic coldness and the dissonances that disturb the calm like so many anxious manifestations to create a whole where the listener's imagination can let itself go. These are some fine synthetic ghosts we're delighted to welcome into our attic to mourn the end of the world with them.
