French one-man project Feu Follet, based out of Nancy, is going to release his second album “La forêt oubliée” just only six months after his debut full-length “Le Champ Des Morts”.
“La forêt oubliée” (‘the lost forest’) represents the heart and soul of its creator and only band member, Alban Blaising, combining words, pictures, and songs to encapsulate the full essence of Blaising’s love for animals, the woods, and mysterious film scores.
Through a minimal yet rich-sounding instrumentation, comprised of analogue synthesizers, electric guitars and drum machines, Feu Follet‘s ’80s-tinged, distinctive and bold, sonic palette, hard to pin down, blurs the thin lines between synthwave, new wave, coldwave, post-rock and shoegaze.
A hand-drawn 20-page comic illustrates a haunting chain of events centring around an ancient tombstone culminating with the desperate search for a possessed boy. The composition paints an audiovisual feast for the inner eye forming a film full of darkness, moments of light, drama, childhood, horror, innocence, paranoia and beauty as you enter into the woods and absorb all it has to offer.
“When the boy enters the scene you can almost hear his footsteps in the grass and his chuckling echoing from the trees. When he disappears, the music becomes bleaker, in parts claustrophobic – here the comic shows him crying underground sitting on a pile of skulls. Captivating, disturbing and fascinating.”
“Les Marcheurs”, the seventh song from the album, WL//WH is pleased to premiere, tells about a band of hikers walking through the forest, as they hear and see strange things. It corresponds to the 2nd Chapter of the story when supernatural events occur after the discovery of a tombstone in the old forest.
An analogue synth-Infused atmospheric dreamscape is introduced by soft natural chimes melt under subtly treated, bittersweet vocals, propelled by solid drumbeats, swaying with mysterious and otherworldly intensity in a dizzying swirl of wistfully glistening guitar melodies and enveloping evocative synth chords laced with pristine sheen before gradually descending into a seemingly calm, buzzing and glitchy, eerie interlude suffused of seething anticipation, as dark and menacing reverb-filled abrasive guitar riffs and a last terse beat come heralding something dangerously obscure and ominous.
Pupilless white orbs lie within the eye sockets of menacing animals as they surround a tall human-esque skeletal creature set against the backdrop of muted earth-toned woods with the words “La forêt oubliée” cryptically drawn in thick jagged French script.
Mystic symbols merge with the elements of nature blurring light to cast a hazy glow atop the daunting environment filled with discovery, violence, and portals to another realm. Emotions, visually expressed using contrasting colours and facial expressions, engage the reader in the haunting sequence of events as skulls, spectres and supernatural forces guide us on a journey through the sinisterly enchanting mysticism of “The Lost Forest.”
Feu Follet‘s sophomore album “La forêt oubliée” is due out on February 7, 2020, CD/Cassette + Comic / Digital, through Berlin-based independent label Blackjack Illuminist Records.
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