Dernière Volonté * Immortel (cd 2010)
Of course it was to be expected that Dernière would move away a bit more from the “martial” sound, but “Immortel” is far far worse than I feared. The sound is still recognisably Dernière, but the tempo went down and with the even more cheesy way of singing, the songs can hardly be called “catchy” anymore; “boring” or even “irritating” is a more fitting description. A few songs start like things will get better, but as soon as the singing comes in and the speed drops again, we are back to zero. I am sorry, but there is little positive that I can say about this album.
Links: Dernière Volonté, Hau Ruck!
It has been five years since the interesting debut of this Romenian duo. “Dialogue” mixed different kinds of music into an interesting style. On “Divine Skinny” there is again a mix of styles, but the result differs from the previous album. After hearing the Myspace tracks I got myself a copy of the new album, but I must say that I am disappointed by it. The cd opens interestingly with a mix between folk and industrial, but most of the tracks are rather bluesy, minimalistic, slow tracks, mixed with electropop and other poppy sounds. Especially the female vocals are not my thing (I prefer the photos of the very skinny Julie in the booklet) and the music is quite boring at times. I do like the fact that the bands presents something very uncommon and perhaps some more (than four) listenings will make the album grow a bit, but I can currently not give too much praise to it.
Position Parallèle are Geoffry D. and Pierre Pi. The first is of course better known as Dernière Volonté, the second seems to have been involved in the same project in the earlier days. It is not totally unexpected that Geoffry D. took his accessible sound a step further and leave the “military” sound behind. Position Parallèle became a disco cd, or better said: a synthypop cd, because some songs remind of New Order or Soft Cell and I can promise you, the sound is as ‘faulty’ as the cover! Very recognisable are Geoffry’s vocals, but the sound differs a lot from DV as you can imagine. The cd turned out nice. It is not as good as ‘that other recent disco cd’ “Magic” of November Növelet, but it is a nice listening. A bit of a short one though, 35 minutes.