Oh, how we missed them! After two albums just two years apart in 2015 and 2017, the two witches of Machinalis Tarantulae kept a low profile. This fascinating project, in which the viola da gamba, an instrument systematically associated with the Renaissance, is modernised with an industrial twist, is back at last with Traum. The title is a promise: prepare to enter a unique universe, poetic and disturbing, at once baroque and fantastic, but above all haunted by sublime shadows of unreal beauty.
More than composed, Machinalis Tarantulae's music seems to be woven in the gloom of a cabin deep in the woods. It's a pleasure to rediscover all those strange, disquieting little dissonances that open the title track, before being grabbed by the throat by the aggressive guitar riffs and frenetic percussion of Miss Z. On vocals, Justine Ribière opts for a cold, stern diction, a figure of authority imposing the rules of her ritual. We're surprised by the sudden aggression, the quasi-industrial metal touches that we'd already guessed in the past, but which explode here with a new rage.
On their third album, Machinalis Tarantulae show their teeth and get right to the heart of the matter with a succession of catchy tracks. The icy, primitive rhythms impose their tension with a hypnotic, mystical repetitiveness that verges on trance. Melancholy creeps in, mingling with the sense of urgency and alienating anguish exuded by the guitars. Out of time, the two musicians combine past and future in both their music and the images it conjures up, from the steampunk reveries of Méliès's To the Moon to the dark electro chill of the haunting Witch (with Shaârghot's mates on backvocals), always with the viola da gamba imposing mystery, melancholy and suspense, hanging on the bow. As time goes by, we find ourselves turning up the volume, again and again.
By leaving aside the more atmospheric, purely instrumental tracks, Machinalis Tarantulae has become denser and more effective. But have they lost any of their magic? Well, no. Hear them incanter in the night of Confinia Mundi, let the samples of Giant Stones extract us once again from the real world or charm us with the heaviness of Archers Are Blind and its sinister melody that crawls in the darkness, where they mix delicacy and harshness with their very particular know-how. Along the way, we're led astray by Time Stand, where Les Tambours du Bronx add a little extra power to the percussion (we're guessing that Arco Trauma, a long-standing companion of the artists involved, is no stranger to this beautiful encounter), and we start to imagine what a more substantial collaboration between the two projects would sound like, our two priestesses imposing their magic in the midst of the percussions
It's by following this dreamlike thread, also woven in the marvellous darkness of Traum, that we think back to the concerts. Machinalis Tarantulae are two musicians sitting in the dark, exuding a rare power, combining the intransigence of industrial coldness with baroque poetry. This new album seems tailor-made for live performance: with its more ritualistic, biting approach, Traum delivers one incisive track after another. It's both heavy and ethereal, and the cathartic pulsations will continue to possess us long after we've listened to it again and again. Meanwhile, Machinalis Tarantulae shows superb vigour, doesn't repeat itself, gains in power and confirms its status as such a singular and precious project. Brilliant!.
