Kloahk has the discreet presence of a sigh you think you've heard in the night. The spectral silhouette of the artist, in his role as an analog ghost, can be guessed between the frames of a cathode ray tube screen. Perhaps you have to pause to make out his profile among the shadows... We had to wait three and a half years for the V E R S O 2 EP to finally get a follow-up, Paul Prevel having in the meantime been very busy with the industrial metal band Shaârghot. V E R S O 3 is finally here, allowing us to immerse ourselves in this singular, rich and personal universe.
As time goes by, Kloahk asserts itself more and more and finds itself. If we were won over from the first moments, we feel that the choices are more and more assumed, like Vagissement which serves as an introduction. A heart beats in the distance, it crackles, a few noisy sounds emerge from the silence like a pale image suddenly lit up in the half-light. The tension mounts. This is going to be good. The guitar is heavy, menacing, sinister. Kloahk's horrific touches are more palpable, but despite the aggressiveness of the strings, the project's very particular sensibility haunts the music more than ever.
In a genre where harshness, festive violence and displays of force are more common, Kloahk opts for a poetic and sincere approach. The vocals grab you by the gut, there's a touching simplicity to the laments we hear, and a power to the emotions conveyed by the voice. Vulnerable, raw, this pale spectre lets its spleen drip from its heady refrains (Round and Round or Lullaby and their chorus that immediately possess us like hungry spirits). The guitar roars among the omnipresent machines, and a lament escapes: have we ever known Kloahk so tormented? V E R S O 3 is heavier but also more raw.
We discover the artist as narrator of his gloomy stories, immediately evocative of powerful images. Memory of Light and Black and White explore the deepest darkness, a comfortable lair where one can bleed hidden from view. The macabre gemellity that we could have guessed from Kloahk's themes has mutated into a duality between light and darkness, colour and monochrome, multitude and solitude, two worlds opposed by the flickering mirror of a screen left on, at once refuge and prison. Our spectre is stuck in the dark, and it's with pleasure that we let ourselves get caught in its net, at its side.
Kloahk is a black diamond that absorbs light, only to let it filter back out. Every moment of this V E R S O 3 convinces us a little more: this voice is unique. This sensitivity, this mastery of textures, this care with ambiences (the new version of It's Alright has never given the lie to its title), this suffocating melancholy, this distress but also threats as gentle as a whisper from beyond the grave... As he takes us into the almost seven minutes of Goodbye, the epic cinematic and dramatic finale and its crescendo, Kloahk keeps us on the edge of our seats as much as he knots our guts or sends shivers down our spines with creepy inverted whispers.
It's hard, it's sad, it's mysterious, it's beautiful. Never has this project sounded so good (the percussion is sometimes massive, the care taken with the sound design to bring the images to life is impressive), never has its darkness seemed so glorious and salvific. So let's take savour this EP's generous length and comfortably contemplate our wounds sheltered from the sun and take refuge in its fragility, torments and fears. Not only does Kloahk infuses industrial rock with a unique romanticism and fragility, and really brings something to the genre, it's also, quite simply, the kind of amazing music we don't hear often enough.
