Bete Noire - ART BRUT
Bete Noire members are Arnold Górka (voc, guitar), Grzegorz Dziewicki (guitar, programming, keys), Krzysztof Rak (bass), Jan Krukowski (drums, traps) and Paweł Maciejkowicz (clarinet, keys, saxophone). their music is what is described as wave/cold wave, popular at the turn of the 70s/80s. They've played since 2003. “Art Brut” is their first album, its predecessors were the demo “Omen” and EP \"Nothing At All\" both stuck in cold wave, psychedelia, rock and pop-rock style.
„Art brut” is an album-box. In the box you'll find lots of little cards with the inscriptions 'religion', 'politics', 'poetry', 'psychology', 'philosophy', 'society', 'human', 'illusion', 'truth', 'consciousness' and so on.. I bet every listener could add some new ones to that.
Art brut stands for raw, unfalsified art. The term was introduced by the French painter Jean Dubuffet in 1975. It is also referred to as the paintings made by mentally ill or by children, invented art, the naive, primitive art, obscure, weird art. It's very much about paintings of course... does the music of Bete Noire follow that pattern?
By all means it's marked with madness: which is particularly visible in the song „Lalki na sznurkach”, but also in lyrics („Białe Przestrzenie”) and the music of other songs, which seem to be replete with it. Repetitive, aggressive rhythm („Anima”) or decelerating, more swinging pace („Don”, Białe przestrzenie”), by building an atmosphere of threat or limitations form the mood of the album shaping it into a psychedelic confession-manifesto.
The opening track „Goralenvolk” is constructed on the basis of German speech samples, „Don” – cold, changeable melody that seems to be torn by the sound of clarinet, builds an atmosphere of anxiety and lostness. Hard hitting and frenzy instruments enter afterwards breaking violently into this rather delicate matter, which produces an effect of mad, uncontrollable musical dance intertwined with as slightly neurotic vocal. „Psy anioły” sticks to same stylistics, however, it's far more gentle: drilling melody is combined with peculiar lyrics as if imitating unrhymed poetry.
„Anima” seems to be about impossibility of establishing contact with reality, of getting rid of illusions. ”of lonely hours„ by the choice of the vocalic manner as if makes use of overflow – the end of verse is transferred to the next metrical line which device produces the emphatic effect . The motive of poetry is ubiquitous on the whole album („la poeme convulsif” is a sort of musical representation of what is known from e.g. poetry of Verlaine - spasms, shocks, jolts just built by means of sounds, not words).
Generally speaking, the way Arnold sings the songs imitates poetic verse, also by means of changes in intonation or accent what adds new quality to the words and reveals their changeability and equivocalness. The lyrics – featuring enigmatic, poetic and fragmentary words build sequences by their repetitiveness and make impression of reshuffling columns that create kaleidoscopic entities.
„Lalki na sznurkach”, the next song on the album, one could say, a flag song of Bete Noire – features cabaret or operetta elements; it may evoke associations with Ataraxia or Katzenjammer Kabaret; it's a kinda mixture of 'naive'' tune with a rather bitter text which contrasted with each other give a really striking effect.
The album is closed by „Nothing at all” - that is the track of the first EP – creating as though a frame construction for Bete Noire – the band seem to be coming back to their sources with it.
All in all, „Art Brut” sounds like a musical continuation of the previous releases, it follows cold wave and psychedelia motives, while the referential richness definitely make it worth of your attention.
