Land had already convinced us of their talent with 'Idi i Smotri' first released in a confidential manner as a CD-R to which Eis & Licht gave a deserved echo by re-issuing it as a 10". It's with an album released on the eclectic French label Divine Comedy that this French formation reminds itself to us... With 'Opuscule', Land offer one of the best productions I've listened to for a while... The ambient, martial, ritual sonorities combine marvellously to deliver an album that one does not tire of listening... The tone is given in the very first minutes of the record with a ritual track where one recognised in the background an old period song full of nostalgia...
'Alambic de songes' and 'La danse de minuit (acte II)' reveal all the gripping and dark intensity of the ambient aspect of this work. 'Décembre incertain' and 'Soir d'inquiétude' are, in my opinion, amongst the most beautiful realisations present on this record. The more percussive first title also unveils a male voice sample that reveals after a more attentive listening to the words a close relation to the horrors endured in the trenches by the French poilus of the First World War... a harrowing track that is full of an eternal force... That of remembrance?... Then one turns his attention to the artwork that accompanies this production... Sober... it leads the curious auditor to try to decipher the extract from a correspondence and to make up his own interpretation of the only annotation present 'Memories of Jules B. (1917-1924)'... The album closes magnificently on 'Epilude', a mix of atmospheric ambient tinted with more ritual sonorities, a track where the perceptible cracks of vinyl and the echoes of an old song only add to an already strongly present nostalgia...
An excellent album that it would be more than unjust to ignore... It is with impatience now that one waits to discover their contribution to the tribute to Jean Marc Dauvergne, a project that should soon see the light on Divine Comedy, as always...