ORCHESTRA NOIR - What If…

2010 might well be remembered as the year that saw the coming together, within their respective musical projects, of David Tibet, Tony Wakeford and Douglas Pearce: the triad of the British post-industrial epic, the bards of the modern Apocalypse, the minds behind Current 93, Sol Invictus and Death in June - the three contemporary artistic entities most responsible for inventing and defining the canons of what we've come to call folk noir, apocalyptic folk, or neo-folk.

And it's Wakeford who takes the prize for the finest performance of the bunch, thanks to the splendid “What If…”, released under the name Orchestra Noir. If Sol Invictus remains the mask Wakeford alone dons to reckon with his own inner - antimodernist - demons, Orchestra Noir represents the choral declension through which he rides and explores paths more closely tied to a certain neo-classical imagination.

Eight gems of symphonic craftsmanship frame this “What If…”, a work released through Neuropa Records that features - among others - the precious vocal contribution of Canadian Autumn Grieve, aka Autumn Richardson, an artist we'd already encountered in Triple Tree, another project involving the British bard.

Let's be clear: all too often, attempts to revisit and rework the stylistic hallmarks of (neo)classical and symphonic music end up producing clumsy, botched experiments, overflowing with gaudy, bombastic and baroque sonic architecture that actually conceals the intellectual and poetic shallowness of whoever's behind them. That's obviously not the case with this “What If…”, which sounds particularly inspired and should therefore delight even those who don't normally follow the symphonic strands of a certain European music with much interest.

It's impossible not to be enchanted and swept away by the fragile composure of the solitary paean that opens a track like “A Second Before”. A lament that unfolds into an intense, heartrending counterpoint of piano and strings, over which Wakeford's caressing voice breaks through: it will probably remain one of the most emotionally gripping pieces the British bard has given us in recent years. At the same time, there's an immediate sense of calm and delicate sweetness radiating from the prologue “The House On The Hill”, a repose that then gives way to an undefined sense of inner despondency taking shape in the horns of “Bedlam”.

If there's a record capable of welcoming and greeting the winter that has just begun, that work is without a shadow of a doubt “What If..”.

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22/12/2010