Song for the Beautiful Wanton

I discovered Eyeless in Gaza toward the middle of the 80's, with the fantastic albums that are  "Photographs as Memories", "Rust Red September" and "Drumming the Beating Heart". It was during the post - punk period , which was amputated by the irreplaceable loss of Joy Division, but Eyeless In Gaza, didn't yet sound like anything heard before, proposing a timeless music of a rare beauty, at a time tender and acidic. Then will follow a impressive number of collaborations with Mick Harris, Anne Clark (Live Berlin in), Deirdrie Rurkowski (This Mortal Coil) or recently Orchis (12'000 Days) or Genesis P-Orridge and Bill Laswell (Hashisheen - the End of Law), as well as the performances in solo of Martyn Bates (Imagination Feels like Poison, Chamber Music). Martyn Bates and Pete Becker reappeared five years ago with " Bitters Apples ", and they also composed ambient pieces. And here they're back again with " Song for the Beautiful Wanton ". Music is a lot more delicate than in the past, distilling a timeless folk of immediate and tragic beauty with a  tenacious melancholy. This is an autumnal album, for rainy days. The music of Eyeless in Gaza is not given, it's earned, as said anywhere else.... Accoustic , folk and avant-gardists compositions, very emotional with an incomparable strength. The voice and the guitar of Martyn Bates evolve in perfect symbiosis with the precised orchestrations of Pete Becker, giving a fundamental importance and  depth to the superb texts.
Again a magnificent album for a band among the most important of these last twenty years.

Superb  !

Stéphane Fivaz
August 2000

Label : Soleilmoon Recordings (Sol 94 CD)

Distributors :

Worldwide : Target (info@target-export.com)
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                      Hausmusik (hausmusik@t-online.de)
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Japon : Satoshi Morita (kikuchi@pos.co.jp)