FILIAMOTSA - Like It Is

The Nancy-based band was formed in 2007 around the core duo of Émilie Weber (violin and vocals) and Anthony Laguerre (drums), though over the years it has taken on various shapes: from the quintet with the "expanded" name Filiamotsa Soufflant Rhodes, which gave birth to the self-titled gem released in 2012, through the trio featuring the collaboration of Philippe Orivel on violin and keyboards, up to the new album, which brings together every musician who has ever been part of the project.

"Like It Is", indeed, doesn't at all betray the French outfit's noise and psych-rock spirit (even though the tracks are in English) — if anything, with the addition of the legendary singer and leader of Dutch band The Ex, active since the Eighties to this day and authors of a couple of masterpieces like "Scrabbling At The Look" and "Moa Anbessa", it enriches the sound with a streak of post/art-punk and experimentation that recalls past legends such as Pere Ubu or Einsturzende Neubauten. The similarities with the Berlin band aren't limited to the music's complexity, but are also evident in the vocalist's style and timbre, very close to those of the great Blixa Bargeld. On "Like It Is" it's precisely the vocal element that proves to be one of the record's unexpected strengths, with a delivery that borders on spoken word and intones litanies as cutting as sermons in a satanic liturgy, to the point that it also brings to mind another master, a poet of the genre, the undisputed heart of London's Current 93, David Tibet.

On the opening track ("The Little Shop") all these echoes are brought out superbly, giving excellent prominence to the rest of the band as well, in an infernal riot of strings, both distorted and melodic, backed by an outstanding rhythm section. A track that shows the two faces of the French band, underlining the drive and power that, as the record unfolds, we'll slowly watch turn into unease and resignation, like the arrival of the end for someone who had at first tried to fight back.

The crescendo of affliction — which is really nothing more than a gradual easing of the songs' emotional tension — already starts to show with "Madsummer Midness", but it's with the math-rock syncopations of "The Bus Is Late Again" that it all becomes fully conscious. The sound is morbid, the voice seems to curse and plead exactly in the manner of the aforementioned Tibet, the powerful rhythms grow increasingly tormented, and the rest of the band crafts a mix that's lethal to our mental stability. The near-silent seconds that open "Sleepy Tigers" mark the record's official entrance into those subdued territories hinted at earlier. An introduction that might have recalled Swans, had it gone well beyond two and a half minutes and pushed the low frequencies further, but which instead is simply the gateway to hell, precisely because of its deceptive, unsettling calm. The Gira-esque obsessions resurface with "Blab/Blub", before returning to echoes of stillness, here pushed to an exasperated extreme, with "Maybe", and finally closing everything out with the roar of "Song", the last breath of a disturbed soul. Extreme spoken word, orchestral music barely sketched in crescendo, low-end vibrations and a sudden ending, just when everything seemed to be drifting toward something ethereal.

Filiamotsa's new work is the perfect record for those who know how to find beauty even in suffering and fear. An album forged on solid instrumental foundations, which makes use of a voice perfectly suited to evoking the emotional and physical sensations that are its true aim, which finds in Olivier Mellano's guitar that extra something capable of heightening its personality, and which knows how to draw from the masters of the past exactly the right, functional touches, without ever slipping into convention or into mere, pleonastic parody. Without a shadow of a doubt, "Like It Is" ranks among the finest records of its kind heard in 2015, and confirms the greatness of this French band. Amen.

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25/09/2015