Clouds Collide
Until the Wind Stops Blowing

Sometimes, you're struck by people you don't know just by looking at their photos or reading what others say about them. It happened again this morning.

It's like in cartoons when a ton of bricks falls on the unfortunate character's head: you feel frozen, bewildered by what you've just read, you can't explain it but it leaves you feeling bad, deeply, because it touched you in a way you don't understand.

Wilhelm was a year older than me: a few weeks ago he had decided to put his label on standby, due to lack of time and a momentary lack of desire and motivation. It made me feel a bit upset, also because it was a charming label, capable of discovering true gems in the dense underground of "strange" bands from North America (but not only). I said "strange" because Wilhelm had very eclectic musical tastes, effortlessly moving from chaotic, noise-leaning black metal to dreamy, ethereal post-black, but everything he decided to produce, and all the passions he indulged, you knew they were carefully chosen and of remarkable quality. Also because the packaging of these albums was often crafted by him, assembled one by one, often in a few numbered copies. He was a person who, when he believed in something, would dive in wholeheartedly, with the humility that his eyes and smile immediately conveyed to me that morning when I read that he was gone.

It was his wife who made this announcement, providing no explanations, just saying "...Wilhelm is no longer among us". The post continued talking about this young man, about how he was able to illuminate with his spirit the people and things around him, and closing with "Wilhelm, darling-- please rest in peace, the world is a little less bright without you..."

By the end of the message, as I said, I didn't know what to think, my head was full of confusion, with images and sounds intertwining. Two particular photos came back to my mind, connected to a specific album. In one, there was a girl with sad eyes, cold even though the photo was bathed in warm, autumnal hues. The girl held perhaps a large mug of coffee and was sitting (I believe) in the back seat of a car, all wrapped up in a striped, shapeless coat... If it weren't for the colors and other details, I'd have thought she was a survivor from a concentration camp.
In the second photo, there was a house with a beautiful flowering tree (it seemed like a peach tree) to its left, and isolated houses in the background. The beauty of this image, beyond its aesthetic importance, lay in the fact that the photo was taken in the middle of winter (there was snow on the ground and on the rooftops), yet the tree was stubbornly blooming, with its leaves shining golden, immersed in a light that reminded me of the previous photo.

The album I instinctively linked to these photos, to Wilhelm, and to his story is an album sweet and cold, distant and chilling like the continuously blowing wind mentioned in its title. It's an album that speaks of love, abandonment, melancholy, and sweetness, and it does so with words slowly pronounced yet shouted from afar, as if the wind itself was carrying them. The music, far from aggressive (though it comes from a genre that made rage and ferocity its raison d'être) knows how to be lashing, knows how to cut but is not repulsive, it attracts you hypnotically and envelops you... Just like the shapeless coat of that girl. And the warm/cold sensation conveyed by the tracks is the same that the light with which the photos were taken lends to faces and landscapes.
The band (although it is actually just one person) that made this album dedicated it to the girl on the cover (the artist's mother), but reading Wilhelm's wife's post, the connection to him was automatic, and I believe even the artist himself (whose album was published by Wilhelm's label) upon reading the news must have immediately connected the dots.
It's been a few days since this post appeared, but I still think about it, and I can't make sense of it: I think about how he was almost my age, I wonder what could have happened to abruptly end his life, and I ponder on the enormous, immense, cold void you leave when you go like that, suddenly: even though, I've always believed, if you are a good person, if you've done some nice things for those around you, when you leave, you will nevertheless leave a golden aura, a presence, a scent that people will always associate with you. So it will be for Wilhelm, so it was, at least as far as I'm concerned, for David Gold before him.

"Until the Wind Stops Blowing" is the latest album by Clouds Collide, the moniker behind which the solitary Chris Pandolfo hides. The proposed genre is a post-black metal heavily tinged with shoegaze ("Blackgaze" or "Blackenede Shoegaze" I've also read): to be clear, it's similar to the very early Alcest. The taste for dreamy melody grafted onto black foundations is common to both, although Pandolfo's scream is less powerful and piercing than Neige's, more affected and fused with the contours of the music he offers, almost an additional instrument. Moreover, where Neige's early albums might recall a mild autumn afternoon, here we are in the depths of winter, on a morning marked by a clear sky and sudden gusts of icy wind... Cold and wind characterize the entire work, from the title to various elements inserted in the tracks. It's a work to be listened to in one breath, able to cradle the listener, even though the offering is not, of course, the most straightforward and accessible.

Currently, I don't know the "physical" availability of the album (I don't think it's a problem for the digital format): due to the closure of the label for which it was published, Khrysanthoney, I believe the main reference point remains the author himself. It is, however, a work that must be listened to, at least before summer arrives, while the memory of winter is still alive. Certainly, it should be listened to when you want to think of someone who is no longer with us, because as Pandolfo himself says about his project, the keystones on which he bases his music are "Music. Life. Death. Dreams. Memories. Nostalgia. Ups. Downs."

Note: I didn't want it to turn into a funeral tribute, but that's the nature of my "blog-like reviews": I only write if the music conveys images to me, and this time it went like this. I hope I haven't bored you, but I felt like writing a few words about a person who is no longer with us and about a great album that, fortunately, I managed to buy, and that I will hold even more dear.