"Shub Niggurath" (86)
"Les Morts Vont Vite" (86)
"Live" (89)
"C'étaíent de Très Grands Vents" (91)ç
Shub-Niggurath is music from the Art Zoyd / Magma
/ Univers Zero school, but much more dense, dark, and atonal, ranging from
beautiful to frightening.
It's great stuff, impossible to describe in words accurately, but I WILL say it's probably
not for everyone. If you like the aforementioned three bands, then chances are you'll like
these guys, and if you don't - you wont. If you're not sure about it, I'd start out with
something by one of the other bands first.
This RIO band has been compared to Magma, but "C'étaíent de Très
Grands Vents" displays few characteristics with which we usually associate Magma:
furious rhythms, Gregorian chanting, and bleating horn races. Instead we find a nearly
all-instrumental, only occasionally rhythmic, dark nightmare. The opening track, "Glaciations",
builds from a faint hum to a distorted cacophony of clangs and bangs, Frith-like scratchy
guitar feedback, and growling bass - similar in spirit to Henry Cow's "Western
Culture" period. The rest of the album follows similar strategies. This album
will probably attract hardcore RIO-heads, but those who need symphonic
underpinnings and/or harmonic development will more than likely dismiss this as an
abstract mess. Perhaps that's the main fault I find with this album. Unlike Univers
Zero and Henry Cow, Shub Niggurath never really resolves their
formidable noise attacks with any sense of convergence or development. Most of the album
is nearly inaudible, and even when it does turn up the juice, it doesn't pack the
emotional whallop of Univers Zero's "La Faulx" or Henry Cow's
"Half the Sky". So in that respect its a dissapointment; not for what you
hear (which is shred-worthy in and of itself), but for what you don't hear.
Spoken of in the same breath as Magma for some weird reason. Shub-Niggurath
are also often described as "fusion." Both these descriptions are wildly
misleading. Imagine Univers Zero's "La Faulx" but without the catchy
bits! There is little identifiable melody, it's mad drums, distorted bass and guitar and
wild horns in a very dark mixture of quiet haunting backgrounds and insane crescendo. It's
completely fantastic. Darkly beautiful.
"Prométhée" from "C'étaíent de Très Grands Vents"
(this track was called "Prométhée Foudroyé" on their earlier
live Auricle tape) has Stella Vander-style vocals which are operatic and hair
raising. Incredible.
Dark, spacious and often disturbing are the three best adjectives to describe Shub-Niggurth's
"C'étaíent De Très Grands Vents" CD released by Musea. The
phrase "Shub-Niggurath" comes from the writings of one of the masters of
the horror genre, H.P. Lovecraft. The music on "C'étaíent..."
would fit very well as a soundtrack for many of Lovecraft's stories.
Instrumentation consists of bass (Alain Ballaud), electric guitar, piano, harmonium
(Jean-Luc Herve), drums (either Michel Kervinio or Edward Perraud,
both on "Prométhéé"), bass trombones (Veronique Verdier), and
occasional voice (Sylvette Claudet). Analogy is perhaps the best way to describe Shub-Niggurath's
music. Imagine a mix of Present or early Univers Zero with Henry Cow
improvisations, playing while on downers. "C'étaíent..." opens with the
seven minute "Glacíatíons". The song consists of quiet, icy emanations
broken by occasional fissues of frenzied drums, bass and guitar. "Océan"
is four minutes of meandering trombone improvisation and distorted guitar, followed by one
minute of intense zeuhlish improvisation that calls to mind Happy Family, then a
long fade into nothing. "Prométhéé" is a clear vocal line sung against
crashing, discordant guitar chords. The vocals are eventually replaced with meandering
bass, much like the trombone of "Océan". Herve just bangs out distorted
guitar chords for the entire five minutes. I think you are beginning to get the picture.
Because the instrumentation and improvisation is used sparse, the music is very spacious,
often almost ambient in nature, perhaps as a result of influences from some avant-garde
classical composers such as Penderecki. Yet, the atmosphere is always very tense,
and songs don't always have detectable direction or musically resolved ending. Shub-Niggurath
do not play music for casual listening andgenerally only for the experimentally-minded and
those predisposed toward the avant-garde.
Mike Taylor