Clan of Xymox
Farewell

THE REVIEW

In the year 2003, when the old guard of dark wave was virtually extinct and the new forces of the genre were consolidating in an increasingly superficial landscape with less and less substance, the Dutch Clan of Xymox produced their most electronic album to date, reaffirming a leadership that not everyone took for granted. Having reached the present day with twenty-five years of honorable career behind them (thus becoming one of the longest-lived dark bands), at the beginning of the 2000s Ronny Moorings and company repainted their sound by progressively eliminating guitars and focusing on keyboards, without losing that patina of melancholic and shadowed romanticism, but—if you will—emphasizing even more the nihilistic and "gothic" imprint. In fact, the album "Farewell" represented (in 2003) the peak and point of no return of their creativity, which embraced the logic of a pounding and buzzing techno combined with the atmospheres dear to the band; with minimalist lyrics full of pathos and tension and a decidedly disillusioned approach.

This carefully packaged work, endowed with a truly remarkable acoustic clarity, debuts with a pair of relentless tracks that leave an immediate mark, whether for the linear refrains or for the precise rhythm scanning. The title track "Farewell" and "Cold Dump Day" are two pearls of cultured techno that drag you into a triumph of synthesizers and decadent emotions, revisiting the images evoked in the memorable debut album "Clan of Xymox" (1985) with an updated interpretation stripped of the more dreamy inclinations.

The aura of darkness and unease does not falter as the tracklist unfolds, with tracks having eloquent titles like "There's No Tomorrow" and "Into Extremes" leaving no doubt about the moods that inspired them. And if towards the end the eighties reminiscences of Sisters of Mercy in "Losing My Head" seem to open a glimpse of irony in this fair of anguish, the closing "Skindeep" resets the emotional wakefulness and ends the listening with a grim cut.

It's no coincidence that after "Farewell" there was an attempt to recover able to shuffle the cards, with a return to guitars and a not very successful disguise of the techno sound. In reality, "Farewell" was the sign of an evolutionary path that, in the European wave scene, could not help but to give itself a more precise identity. An identity skillfully shifted towards electronics and capable of assuming an extremely dark profile despite the common belief that dark sound cannot forgo guitars. Indeed, some exegetes and fans of the Dutch group raised their eyes, listening to "Farewell," only to change their minds a few years later with the release of the unsuccessful and banal "Breaking point".