Hector Zazou
Sahara Blue

Rimbaud

The Coming of Youth

Perfect Image

Perfect Sensation

(Maximum volume The First God)

One thing is certain: when you take the trouble to put the verses of a great poet to music, you're taking a big risk. Nothing is easier than to ruin a masterpiece.

And if the poet is not only great but also legendary, you're in for a world of trouble.

And if he is great, legendary, and the subject of millions of exegeses and marginal notes, it gets even more complicated.

In short, dear Mr. Zazou, I can imagine the millions of Rimbaud enthusiasts, Rimbaud scholars, and Rimbaudists at your door. And I can imagine them all saying, "Who the hell are you, how dare you?"

And you know why I imagine them? Because I'm a Rimbaud enthusiast, a Rimbaud scholar, a Rimbaudist myself... So, I'm right there knocking at your door too,

The first thing I have to tell you is this: wasn't young Arthur already a heavy enough card to play? Did you really need to call in all those people, like John Cale, David Sylvian, Dead Can Dance, Bill Laswell? Don't you know that too much is too much? Don't you know you can't play with five number tens? That in doing so, even Chievo can outpace you on a counterattack?

So you already take the greatest poet of all time and then, not satisfied, you gather all those fine people? Don't you know Argentina never wins the World Cup? Don't you know that with cards like these, if you fail on the last trick in a game of tressette, the whole bar will be laughing at you?

But if that were the only issue...

The worst part is that all the pieces are in the right place.

And so, for the African years, here are the ethnic sounds... and for the visionary poetry, here's a kind of avant-garde deflated lounge.

Everything's fine, of course. It's just that there's not a single note out of place and not a damn thing that doesn't revel in its own damn elegance. And this is a problem.

Because Rimbaud was always out of place and didn't give a damn about elegance.

He was disdainful, he was rude. To the point that during his voyou (read: rogue) period, I could easily imagine him in a punk band.

After all, wasn't he the one talking about Venuses with horrible sores on their asses, wasn't he the one comparing dreams to pigeon coop muck, weren't his lilies magnificent enemas of ecstasy and his violets the spit of black nymphs? Not to mention bureaucrats, priests, petty bourgeois viewed as horrible and repulsive subhuman growths.

And in the Voyant (read: seer) period, wouldn't he have been a fantastic psychedelic frontman?

You remember, don't you, when he saw UNDENIABLY a mosque instead of a workshop and a living room at the bottom of a lake? Or when he tried to rediscover the innocence of things and language?

And in the little song period (read: literally little song), when with silly refrains and naive rhythms he noted the inexpressible and captured vertigo, was he not perhaps in the throes of a sort of crooked and trembling Barrett-esque grace ahead of its time?

And anyway, dear Mr. Zazou, we're talking about the cosmic boyfriend of Auntie Patti... of someone who whispered in the ear of mister tambourine...

And one of his poems was even set to music, in a strange Chinese album, by a certain Miss Pravo.

But okay, I'll stop with my Rimbaud-enthusiast, Rimbaud-scholar, Rimbaudist obsessions now... because even if your album is occasionally boring, it does have some amazing numbers...

And when I say amazing, I mean truly amazing...

"Lines," for example, a melancholic almost 4AD lounge that alternates magic and dissonance.

And "Sahara Blue," a ballad accompanied by hypnotic percussion with radio interference and insidious acoustic interludes.

These are magnificent tracks, marked by Barbara Cogan's sweet and suspended voice, which, without overdoing it and while lightly leaning in, successfully meets the unconscious power of the images.

And when in the finale of "Lines" the last vision dies in a slight cacophony... when in "Sahara Blue" all the beauty is summed up in the line "it is all too beautiful," you imagine Rimbaud himself saying: "We did it, damn it!!!"

And yes, we did it, we really did, even if it's not punk, even if it's not psychedelia, even if it's not Barrett....

Then what about "Amdyaz"?

Sung in Arabic, the initial chords seem like those of "Bela Lugosi" by Bauhaus (?) and soon transform into an enchanting Middle Eastern ballad, supported by an acoustic guitar that gradually fills with magical Argentine sounds and strange bells.

The austere voice of Malka Spiegel and the hopping and rhythmic voice of Khaled evoke a goddess and a little spirit dancing around her. The incongruous and jarring electric guitar that appears at the end is then a genuine stroke of genius.

Which, in the face of the fools, shows that electric guitar and the Middle East are indeed a fine couple.

Then, surprise of surprises, there's Mr. John Cale who plays the fine reader. And, in both "First Evening" and "Hungers" (all minimal variations the first and excellent delirium the second), the declaiming voice of the former Velvet renders the hallucinatory tone of the great French poet at its best.

It remains to be said that Dead Can Dance in "Youth" and "Black Stream" do their Dead Can Dance thing, which is more than enough. And especially "Youth," with its imperceptible transition (in just a fleeting moment) from the absolute to the wild, which starts with all evocation and mystery and then all drums and rowdy singing, lingers in the memory.

All the rest is boredom.

Even though, if only for the pleasure of tracing Rimbaud's verses, I sometimes listen to the album from start to finish. But the best is selecting the seven tracks I have poorly described and, at random, listening to them for hours.

Ah, I can't tell you how many afternoons of the nineties I spent like that...

Thank you, Mr. Zazou...