Cabaret Walter presents
Un Cadavre Exquis

Let's go in order. They are not "the" Cabaret Walter, simply because it's not a group. Cabaret Walter is a collective from Lille that likes to play with Dadaism. The name itself evokes the more famous Cabaret Voltaire and not only that: the goal they have set is to create "an exquisite corpse", that is the surrealist concept of the perfect work of art where each artist continues the work from the point where their predecessor left off.

A project that was painstaking and long in gestation: the foundations were laid in 2001 and the tracks have been unfolding and following each other chronologically since then until August 2004. The rules dictated are few: the duration of the piece must be between three and five minutes; the artist must be unaware of the other pieces, except for the one of their predecessor; each track must end with the repetition of one or two instruments, from which the next track will resume. Almost all the songs are strictly homemade and the result is extraordinary, they blend perfectly with one another.

The hosts reserve the honor of opening the dance, under the moniker L'Ouvreuse. "La porte du cabaret conduit à l'hôpital," a delicate and partially electronic song, is a declaration of intents and the direction the album will take right from its title. The second song begins without being distinguishable from the end of the previous one. The work unfolds following this ideal fil rouge that with Rudy Trouvé (of Belgian fame) takes on darker tones, with a guitar loop that repeats obsessively throughout the song. And so on, passing from the ethereal and dreamy echoes of Dominique A ("Á la Suite") to the tropical notes of Naïm Amor ("Club Tropicana"), truly a shame that the latter clashed a bit.
The Dirty Three take care of bringing the situation back in line with a track that touches the maximum allowed duration: a hypnotic and entirely instrumental song that then flows into the lucid madness of Peter Vermeersch's carnival glories. A journey through time and space that takes us from France in 2001 to Belgium, to the intense and dusty Australia, to conclude in the choral America of Black Heart Procession in 2004.

Almost like looking out a train window, carefully studying the slow and gradual transformations of the landscape. A dream lasting nearly 40 minutes, a homogeneous and thrilling path, melancholic just enough.

… never seen such an exquisite corpse.