VELMA - La Pointe Farinet, 2949 m.

Now at their fourth album, Velma once again prove themselves mysterious masters of a vibrant fusion between acoustic and digital sound.

Up there, atop the Pointe Farinet, the Swiss band stages its usual ritual of hypnotic crescendos, restless and unsettling melodies, and subterranean, dreamlike tensions. This time, though, the rigor of the compositions is tempered by a greater expressive awareness, which makes the listen enjoyable even in the seemingly more challenging moments.

Less abstract, then, and more concrete in defining its sonic scenery, the Lausanne trio's music seems to have reached full maturity across these eleven tracks, rising to the level of a true trademark.

They may have abandoned experimental ambitions and any urge to move into other musical territories, but it's still true that their sound retains a particular allure, as confirmed right away by the shadowy cyclical pulse of "32 Offices".

As if emerging from some "earthly" underworld, the voice stretches out, airy, over electro-acoustic landscapes ("Growing Confusion"), builds monotonously out of a feverish whirl ("No Risk To Be Taken"), leans forward timidly into the anguished confession of "Sleeping Underwear". Everything proves perfectly calibrated to serve what is, in every respect, a rigorous and austere exploration of sound's imaginative, hypnotic possibilities.

And so, even when reworking Motorhead's (!) "Metropolis", they manage to trace a sonic arc that is damnably fragile and visionary. Apocalyptic and martial on "Voices Of The Ether" (featuring Dälek), searching for a sense of reality as close as possible to becoming sound itself on "Quotidien", they certainly don't forget to pay due homage to Massive Attack ("100% Sure"), before setting off again into the icy haze of "Blanquette".

All things considered, then, it seems rather foolish to ask for more from a band that keeps pursuing, with commendable consistency, a path that is, after all, atypical and still very much their own.

A band that, among other things, continues to live in the half-shadow of relative anonymity, despite being praised from many quarters.

It's a private affair, in the end.

An affair devoted to the pursuit of a dazzling transcendence, capable of giving not just a "rational" kind of meaning to epic, mechanical crescendos like the one in "Private Perfection": that is, an intimacy tinged with an almost unbearable perfection.

And which finds, in the delicate bossa nova for solo guitar and voice of "Run", the outlet for an emotion that is finally human, no longer supernatural.

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30/04/2026