The French post-rock band Silent Whale Becomes A° Dream signed with Elusive Sound this year, and will release their 4-track LP Requiem via the label on November 18th–with a vinyl release scheduled for 2018. Describing their music, the band offers these words:
This project is an ode to slowness and to the art of feeling the world, a tribute to rare things, to things that need time to be.”
As the album’s title would suggest, this new work approaches the subject of death with a solemn grandeur and a music that soars with beauty and mystery. The opening track “Dies Iræ, Dies Illa” translates loosely from the Latin as, “That day, is a day of wrath.” Somber strings ache with the full import of the proceedings here. Heavy with sorrow and slow as a funeral procession, their mournful tones grieve the passing with earthy resonance. Eventually reaching that place of final resting, the strings simmer off into a foggy mist, and as the body is lowered into the ground, deeply resonating drums mark the event with gothic ambiance. “Dies Iræ, Dies Illa” is the full ride! Clocking in at over 17-minutes, it’s an epic track that chronicles the sorrow of loss with the kind of passionate intensity rarely seen in post-modern music today.
