It is said that the night has a power of attraction capable of affecting moods, of being the secret muse of poets and, what's more, the theatre of nocturnal enchantment.
In a context where curiosity is no longer the driving force behind unusual discoveries, Saturday 8 March 2025 was marked by a musical line-up of strange and bewitching beauty. It was an evening that delighted the few who braved the drizzle, such an insurmountable obstacle, but it did nothing to discourage the artists, who carried the flame right into the heart of the darkness. They say the night is beautiful, but it's only just begun.
THE DEVIL'S TRADE
The Devil's Trade, performed solo by Dávid Makó, is a sensory dive in which each image is what it shows you and what it hides from you. To hear the sounds, the vocal timbre, you have to go a step further: we are no longer spectators, we become the music. His repertoire perpetuates what the cantors used to carry around in their little notebooks, inscribed with their words.
From his previous album Vidékek Vannak Idebenn (I'll leave it to you to translate the meaning), released on Season Of Mist, David's live repertoire conjures up the folk of his first record Those Miles We Walked Alone, stretching out into a powerfully expressed doom with a guitar and a few layers of drone. The finale recontextualised an instrument through which the vocals are skin-deep, right down to the last note.
INSECT ARK
The heaviness of the evening will be reinforced by the masterful performance of the Insect Ark trio.
Normally formed as a duo and initiated by Dana Schechter, the line-up is completed by Khanate's legendary drummer Tim Wyskida and guitarist Lynn Wright. So much for introductions. Admittedly, Insect Ark is not music made for dancing and swaying, but it is totally unpredictable. The modulating tempos, the dissonant harmonies, everything is subject to a morphism present in the album The Vanishing (2020) and more recently Raw Blood Singing. Dana performs one of his flagship tracks, Three Gates, with surgical precision. What sets the trio apart is their ability to nuance their music, like a sonic eruption whose lava erupts to a crescendo.
From the very beginning of Frozen Lake, every aspect of the music takes on a completely different meaning, the cry of blood emerges from the darkness, Dana's music travels through the ordinary continuum of time, but there is a swiftness that gives access to what seems to escape us. Movement is equated with life, while immobility is equated with death. This postulate is too reductive, because it is presented to us through an absurd and overly rational prism. Insect Ark is mostly instrumental, but when the vocals surprise us with their softness and roughness, the bass riffs grafted onto the colossal rhythm that accompanies them twist all the tessituras of the language.
Les Nuits Magnétiques offered by Ex-Tenebris-Lux, through WhatTheFest, are rare moments that absolutely must be protected, in other words, supported. But what do you do when you're overwhelmed by such beauty? Tell the absent ones? The other nights? We can finally introduce ourselves to them.
