Sweden's Gözde Düzer appeared in the darkest corners of our vision in the late 2010s with Aux Animaux, her darkwave solo project heavily influenced by horror cinema. In the meantime, the artist has surrounded herself with the right people: she can still count on the support of her partner Jonas Fransson, drummer for Then Comes Silence, Doruk Öztürkcan of She Past Away has mixed and mastered a few tracks for her, and the Manic Depression Records label, indispensable for lovers of melancholic chills, is distributing Body Horror, a debut album whose artwork is already setting the scene.
Aux Animaux loves spectres, monsters and bloody rituals, and knows its references well. The creepy ambience envelops us like slimy ectoplasm from its "Shiningesque" intro, Redrum, followed by Sleep Paralysis and its fast, anguished rhythm. Minimalist compositions, tons of reverb: Düzer's vocals mutate into ghostly echoes from beyond the grave as electronics lead the dance. The whispers of Venus Lucifer, Bela Lugosi in cape and fangs on the intro of Night, a haunting hymn to the creatures that prowl after the twilight, the theremin's lamentations on Lost Souls (about animals butchered in slaughterhouses - you now have a clue as to the project's name)... the ingredients come together to paint a gloomy picture as delectable as it is chilling, sprinkled with samples from monuments of horrific cinema.
Using body horror as a grotesque, theatrical facade, Gözde Düzer injects his soul in pain into every track, questioning his physical and mental health as a darkwave heir to David Cronenberg. The journey through Body Horror is both playful for fans of terrors and unsettling, the haunted atmosphere distressing. The distant vocals are more convincingly embodied on the introspective Devastation Song and the theatrical Violence in the Silence. Düzer breathes additional emotion into the machines, ruthless and severe (the EBM influences that transpire furiously from Blackout, for example, and, always, that impression of panic that accompanies them). They are the skeleton (in the closet), the vocals are the (wandering) soul of Aux Animaux.
Aux Animaux's debut album is a mixture of nightmare, seance and tomb-walking: you appreciate its gothic beauty, but are aware that things can quickly get out of hand. Its nocturnal perfume and sepulchral coldness are intoxicating. The most striking feature of Body Horror is that it seems to come from elsewhere, from another reality: every sound is funereal, sinister, stricken with affliction. The artist chooses the label "hauntwave" to describe his music, and we understand her perfectly: if you're looking for a haunted record to wander sullenly in the dark, Body Horror will gladly take possession of your soul.
