Death in June & Les Joyaux de la Princesse
Ostenbraun

Les Joyaux de la Princesse, an entity unknown to most, is actually something that comes from afar, something that has its roots in the year 1986 and boasts the status of an authentic cult band in the vast European industrial scene.

The (albeit limited) notoriety of the French ensemble outside the homeland is due, however, not so much to the skill and technical preparation of Erik Konofal (a daring manipulator of sounds; a pioneer, in a sense, of an industrial avant-garde that effectively combines ambient layers, noise collages, and neoclassical arrangements), but rather to a series of noble collaborations with illustrious names in the apocalyptic scene.

Among these, the collaboration with Death in June by Douglas P should certainly be mentioned: "Ostenbraun", the result of a series of sessions held between 1988 and 1989, is a true gem for the most avid devourers of Death in June's art, given that the work is "non-existent," in the sense that it was neither printed nor distributed at the time, and it still circulates today in cassette and CDR format! (In '95, in fact, the work was printed in an ultra-limited edition box set of only 3000 copies.)

There is, in truth, very little of Death in June in "Ostenbraun," as the work is mainly based on Konofal's evocative martial industrial style, an elegant precursor to the sounds that will bring success to formations like Blood Axis and Der Blutharsch.

In a certain sense, it can be argued that the proximity to the French artist inspired certain claustrophobic atmospheres evoked in the album "Wall of Sacrifice," conceived and realized in the same period. And precisely those exhausting noise excursions can be seen as the main point of contact between "Ostenbraun" and Death in June's art, recognizable in few other instances (the sparse recitations of Pearce, scattered here and there along the sonic desolation that runs through the album; or the explicit quotes taken from Death in June albums: one above all, the nursery rhyme of "Heilige Tod", directly from the seminal "Brown Book").

Pearce's presence, the founding father of the entire scene, is nonetheless terribly imposing, undeniably influential regarding the evolutions of the entire work, pervaded by an obsessiveness attributable to Pearce's inscrutable ghosts: the rumbling of war drums, the solemn songs and military fanfares, but also the hypnotic sounds repeatedly frantically in loops and the poignant romanticism of some melodic solutions are unequivocal elements of Pearce's most typical obsessions, frantically vibrating beneath the placid surface just barely rippled by the appearance of the Princess, occasionally stained by alluring nods to the best dark-wave tradition of the eighties.

Pearce's existentialism thus helps to soothe, lend depth, and at the same time unsettle an industrial machine that proceeds without any hurry, preferring to linger and surrender instead to the ambient breath of the keyboards, the liturgical plots of a church organ, the reverberated singing of tenors lost in the void, while moving and tragic symphonies slowly sink into the abyss like gigantic and rusty ocean liners steadily sinking into the impetuous whirlpools of bottomless seas. Like the anguishing slow-motion of an undecipherable nightmare.

What emerges is a work of enviable compactness and unassailable rigor, with a sinuous pace, a blurred silhouette, but ultimately incapable of offering the listener true thrills. More digestible than other works of Death in June and Les Joyaux de la Princesse, "Ostenbraun" remains, in the worst case, an elegant exercise in style, but at the same time, it can take on the stature of an imposing monument to admire, enthralled, from bottom to top. Within which, however, it is impossible to penetrate.

Sink softly, if you wish, into the comforting coils of Death...