My review: Ground Nero - Stars

 Ground Nero - Stars

Let the spotlight shine on wonderful Belgium. This band has written a temporal, stylistic miracle of undoubted quality, capable of scratching the soul even out of steel. Think of the gloomy Fields of the Nephilim on a rainy day, of Joy Division with the absence of any will to live, and you will have Stars, the cloudburst of the heart, the slowness of the procession contemplating the sky and making earthly living absent, a sadness that walks and causes arthritis in the hands of the mind, where no ark will be waiting to save us

Shamanic, rigid, connecting Darkwave to Coldwave, Gothic Rock to Post-Punk, but this is only the surface, a fact that does not establish the value of this wave of blackish smoke...

A track that hurts, serves the cause of awareness, punishes, and helps truth not surround itself with deception. Bleak, sombre, it can analyse the increasingly black mood and kiss it...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Supino

20 April 2023

https://groundnero.bandcamp.com/track/stars

My Review: Pothamus - Varos (vinyl version)

Pothamus - Varos (vinyl version)

There is a lesser-known Belgium, not that of Coldwave, but represented by this stratospheric band, a golden-skinned musical chameleon, capable of radiating energies and provoking healthy side effects.

The old scribe here is considering a single, soon to tell you about the album from three years ago.

Gloomy the beginning, on a ground filled with fog and stunned palpitations, as if out of an earthquake, to create suspense and controlled tremors. The vocals produce a distant, psychedelic, London 1966-era vocal. The music is a slow, Post-Rock meteorite, with Doom imprints expertly kept in check. There is a lunar landing to replenish the energy that leads to an essential drumming momentum, in a crescendo of celestial intensity.  

The track's progression builds an imaginary plane capable of agglomerating impulses and references that are here mastered in a delightful way: one gets lost, one finds oneself, one compacts the need to find in music a dreamy cradle that keeps awake the adoration for subtle thoughts...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

24 March 2023

https://pothamus.bandcamp.com/track/varos-vinyl-version-ft-stefan-de-graef

My review: CRYPTOCHROMA - Crépuscule (Featuring Leila Venus)

 CRYPTOCHROMA - Crépuscule (Featuring Leila Venus)

Belgium, a land dear and precious to me, both for music and cycling, is experiencing a very fertile moment but, as it often happens there, the spotlight seems to be turned off.

It's a pity because, if we think of Cape Sidereal and its side project called CRYPTOCHROMA, we could really benefit from its dreamy atmospheres not without the possibility of making us dance.

After its debut album Numb in 2020, it is back with a magnetic, sensual, liberating single. To do so, he teamed up with Leila Venus, the Parisian singer with a feathery, warm, meandering voice.

The track in question is a Minimal Wave flow drenched in subtle, almost hidden but effective electronic music.

Cape Sidereal finds an infectious melody, a jet of cold air crossing the desert that remains intact as the song really seems to look out on the sand hills at sunset, with the synth swelling this gloomy feeling.

Everything sticks softly to the skin, making the passage of time and the nomadic movements of the mind feel like something extremely simple.

Leila's spectacular use of vocals delivers blue roses to our hearts with her strong and intense French accent, singing in her mother tongue in the chorus.

And it's pure ecstasy because in its simplicity the song needs nothing else: it gets stuck in our head and provides the urge of repeated listening.

An almost darkness in front of our eyes seems to really lead us into a twilight that connects dream and reality in a hypnotic limbo.

A winning combination: we can only hope that more tracks will be written, because this amniotic blanket called Crépuscule has wrapped us up in sensations that make us feel the pleasure of imprisonment...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

19th April 2022

https://youtu.be/jgWad_tLJNU