“Materia Prima 3.0” is the new extraordinaire EP by Metz-based, French darkwave duo Hanging Gardens , self-released on August 31. I waited patiently for years for their new record to arrive as their debut EP (back in 2015) with the strange name “Corpus 2.0” shocked me with its elegance and with the band’s commitment to poetic darkwave music. Hanging Gardens comprises of singer/ vocalist Nadia B and multi-instrumentist Loic V, a team which shapes some pretty impressive, persuasive and at the end, some utterly conclusive darkwave art at its very edges. But we are familiar in the French style and their unique school of darkwave, aren’t we? Elegance, desire, artistic and musical manners and passions…L’absinthe and the dark melancholy are all over HG‘s art. With a spoken-word, mostly, chanteuse who delivers theatrical treatment in their music like a ghastly maitresse or like a haunted poet who observes and lists the human dark passion, and with a pretty skilled and a thrilling composer, HG‘s music is created not to impress on purpose but is a really impressive effort in all aspects. Performance, arrangements, the flow and the style of the duo appear like among the most original ambassadors of the genre internationally.
The group is driven by the same desire to electrify texts combining the dark poetry with the sombre stories of life, between gliding clouds and cavernous corridors, grazing the sensitive chord of emotion and melancholy. And if some others only have the will to play the game like this, HG have the passion and the whole know-how to dwell in these corridors always presenting outstanding musings which gain the attraction with candor and a clear talent in all.
I read somewhere the other day that the big highlight of the band is the atmosphere they impose on stage, and I am absolutely sure about it as their passionate darkwave art alone must be working on stage as the thread they need to unravel, and as the guide for the audience to places lone, not enchanted by witches and thrills, but corridors which hide dangers and murky thrills. Their whole music sounds like this and Hanging Gardens is an urban dark story-telling outfit with high talent and certain value in all. No more words from me, music speaks louder than words and here is “Materia Prima 3.0”!!!
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Written by Loud Cities Mike
