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They Promised Us a Bright Future, We Were Content with an Obscure Past // Good Luck In Death
Paul Régimbeau, aka Mondkopf, is a producer I had come to associate with some of the most corrupt techno I’d ever heard. Together with Guillaume Heuguet, he founded In Paradisum in 2011, quietly championing a basement-dwelling, tape-chewed approach to dancefloor genres. Their catalogue includes early output from the likes of Low Jack and Qoso, not to mention Régimbeau’s own productions, charged with distorted post-punk angst.
His new collaborative project, ‘Good Luck In Death’, with Lebanese artist Charbel Haber would suggest something of a spiritual rebirth has taken place. In comparison, their They Promised Us a Bright Future, We Were Content with an Obscure Past release is a cathartic, sermon-like listen, a quietly emotive exploration into psychotropic epiphanies. 'Mystery Malaise and Eternal Spleen' makes for an ethereal opener, cascading synthscapes and imposing drones working to a tremoring, introspective close.
'Fortune Telling Breeze' on the other hand calls to mind the unsettled kosmische and grinding slow-motion electronics of Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, sun-basked power-ambient enveloping the listener in a blanket of stretched-out choral textures. Meanwhile, 'Unforgettable Cabaret Nights' creates a spine-tingling Lovecraftian narrative, warbling organ tones and swirling melancholia drifting hazily across the stereo-field.
Régimbeau and Haber voyage deep into the inner psyche with this latest release, while maintaining a light touch in their treatment of acoustic and choral timbres. It is a subtle, patiently developing work, reminiscent of Popol Vuh's soundtracks for Werner Herzog films like Heart of Glass or Aguirre, The Wrath of God, but carried off with their own unique sense of presence.
- Published
- Jul 24, 2018
- Credits
- Words by Theo Darton-Moore