FluxEuropa - dark music and more

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L'ORCHESTRE NOIR

L'ORCHESTRE NOIR is a new initiative launched by Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus as a vehicle for his interest in classical and sound-track composition. Besides Tony, participants include Eric Rogers, Nathalie Van Keymeulen and Céline Marleix-Bardeau (who played with him on In the Rain) and these are joined by Sally Doherty who contributes vocals to this mainly instrumental project.

Their first CD, Cantos, (1997 TURSA 013 CD) has just been issued (March 1997) and can be ordered from Tursa. The title was inspired by the twentieth century avant-garde poet, Ezra Pound, who is featured reading. The album is a powerful and haunting neo-classical oeuvre, and seems to me to be Wakeford's most significant musical composition to date.

The 'main part' of the CD contains only one song, 'In Europa', in which a garden serves as a symbol for the continent. Gardens are a recurring theme in Wakeford's work, as they are in the work of film playright, Peter Greenaway. Product of nature and human artifice, they provide a symbolic meeting point for the romantic and the classical, and for emotion and detachment, and almost imply a baroque game.

Cantos will be followed by Eleven, a requiem to the fallen and those yet to fall.

Rik - 10 March 1997

SALLY DOHERTY http://www.sallydoherty.com