Alcest — là où naissent les couleurs nouvelles
Writing about a french shoegaze band Alcest today. I don’t know French. So let’s get that out the way. However, I enjoy the genre of shoegaze and particularly this band.
Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze) is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and reached peak popularity in the early 1990s. The term “shoegazing” was initially devised by the British music press as a gibe meant to ridicule the stage presence of groups of the period, who stood still during live performances in a detached, introspective, non-confrontational state, often with their heads down; the heavy use of effects pedals also contributed to the image of performers looking down at their feet during concerts. The shoegazing sound is typified by significant use of distortion, feedback, obscured vocals, and the blurring of component musical parts into indistinguishable “walls of sound” — Shoegazing
I liked this song a little too much so I went on to checked the lyrics. I am offering a translation. It is so beautiful that I wish I knew the language to understand it in pure form. The title means Where The New Colours Are Born. That got me intrigued, so here is what I got,
I’ve always lived here, though
Like a stranger wandering
Across this land, forsaken
In a perpetual state of detachment
I hear the call of another universe inside of me
It resounds bitterlyMy eyes are staring up at the sky,
Carrying the burden that is my body
I sense my home,
Lost inside the clouds
Too much gravity here, too many stubborn arms
Holding back the travelling spirits
About to get freeFrom down here, I sense my home
Its eternal meadows
Lost inside the clouds
Where the new colours are born
Where my heart and my soul remained
As the description talks above, there is a distinct wall of sound. The effect gets amplified by the wailing singing in the chorus. Such songs work best to drown out all the distractions and dive in the activity that you are working on. Blogging, coding etc.
At around 5:00 minute mark, the wall of sound just disappears. The guitar riff remains. The haunting riff carries on for a few seconds and you see other instruments joining in. There is a steady drumbeat that follows and then cymbals. At the very end, the heavy saturating bass line hits you and the picture is complete.
I enjoy the photo or painting where the singular object is in focus with a lot of breathing space. However, there are times when you see a photo of all the maple leaves, or a photo where various flowers strewn freely on the floor. There are painting where the canvas is filled completely by colors. The saturation hits you hard. It overwhelms your senses. You gasp for breath. It is hard to comprehend the wide range it encompasses. Shoegaze’s wall of sound is very similar to that. It is saturation of your auditory senses. At times, you just prefer that.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksRBfsz53Eg[/embed]
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