:Of the Wand & the Moon:
:Emptiness:Emptiness:Emptiness:

: We all lie in the gutter
 but some of us are looking at the stars:

 

Little Douglas P. grows up.

 It's 2001 and Kim Larsen, the man behind the project :Of the Wand & the Moon:, releases the follow-up to what remains his unsurpassed masterpiece to date (the promising debut "Nighttime Nightrhymes").
":Emptiness:Emptiness:Emptiness:", proudly "produced, composed, and played under the influence of alcohol and misanthropy", is nonetheless no less intriguing than its predecessor, and, for better or worse, represents what we can expect from the young Danish artist.

 For the better, because ":Emptiness:Emptiness:Emptiness", in its 61 minutes (!), manages to outline the contours of that existential emptiness that was probably the author's intention. This album will inevitably enthrall the heart and mind of anyone willing to surrender to the inconsistency of its enveloping, hypnotic, rarefied notes, devoid of substance, colors, and emotions: notes that, like ominous night vapors, shape a dark and fascinating apocalyptic folk, well-polished in sound and professionally packaged.

Of course,:Emptiness:Emptiness:Emptiness: can easily rhyme with :Boredom:Boredom:Boredom:, and for this to transform into :Emotions:Emotions:Emotions:, one needs to be a die-hard fan of the genre.

Or have never listened to Death in June.

 Because Kim Larsen's proposal (and herein lies the flaw!) seems excessively tied to the music of Death in June, particularly the atmospheres of an album like "Rose Clouds of Holocaust": the vocal cadence, the arpeggios, the melodies of that album are blatantly revived by Larsen, whose only concern seems to be darkening the whole and stripping it of those nuances that Pearce's art, despite its simplicity, knows how to color.

The fact that Larsen is unable to develop his own artistic vision and even less to emancipate himself from the genre's stylistic clichés and commonplaces (with extremely banal lyrics, at times irritating for the pretentiousness that poorly matches their vacuity) thus aggravates an already stern judgment towards a musician who also has to reckon with evident technical and expressive limitations (the latter aspect characterizes a bit the entire scene, but in Larsen, they become exasperated to the point of exasperating the listener).  

That we're not talking about a music genius, after all, is already evident from the cover (extremely tacky!) depicting the fool, dressed in leather, in a forest at night, handling flashy yellow and orange flames, visibly redrawn on the computer: plastic flames, ultimately, a bit like the flame that inspires Larsen's art.
But it's precisely Larsen's inability to convey emotions, which is the venial sin of every artist, that likely becomes the strength of this monochromatic album, :Black:Black:Black:, ready to evoke that emptiness and desolation called upon from the title.

Ghostly folk ballads alternate with dark narratives and hypnotic rituals, but it's more apt to speak of a single experience: the whole ends up sounding terribly compact and devoid of variations because Larsen works by reduction, removes the superfluous, refines the remaining, and ultimately gets terribly stuck in the mire of repetition.

 A minute of nothing, then the eruption of a solemn arpeggio and a monotone voice... no, we're not listening to Death in June: it's "Lost in Emptiness", the imposing opening track! And while on one hand, it's impossible not to criticize such a predictable title, on the other, it's necessary to recognize that "Lost in Emptiness" is indeed the most fitting title to describe that desolate strumming in the dark, that voice lost in the void, those enveloping keyboards that weave dreamy, aimless patterns. (In this regard, the use of keyboards is good, handled with greater skill than in the past and definitively settled on ambient coordinates, if not hallucinogenic.)

 The flowing of liquid organs, the solemnity of hand percussions, the melancholic geometries of the cello, the crackling of a fire burning in the night: yes, everything is decidedly suggestive, but, alas, the ghost of Douglas P. is all too present, becoming a real obsession.

Eloquent, in this regard, is the succession of "Silver Rain" and "Gal Anda", the first dreamy, the second more compelling: a little game that seems to retrace the footsteps of that unrepeatable pairing that was "The Accidental Protégé" and "Rose Clouds of Holocaust".

 Larsen, on his part, offers "Algir Naudir Wunjo" and "Reficul", respectively 12 (!!) and 17 (!!!) minutes long, both called to represent the more mystical soul of his creation.
The first is an ominous invocation based on blurred orchestrations, sampled voices, and the martial beat of percussion: in other words, a pale parody of the masterful "Death of a Man" (guess by whom?) reinterpreted through those twilight and decadent settings so dear to the talking Boyd Rice.
The second, wisely placed at the end, is an exhausting ambient excursion evidently intended to reaffirm the sense of emptiness that inspires the entire work. A piece that even the most irritating Current 93 would not have had the courage to propose.

 However, I don't want the three stars and certain judgments to discourage the curious and prevent them from giving :Of the Wand & the Moon: a chance, because this ":Emptiness:Emptiness:Emptiness:", if taken as a standalone thing and kept away from merciless comparisons, is not bad at all.
If one indeed approaches the work with an open mind and without too many expectations, it won't be difficult to be lulled by Larsen's nocturnal poetry, skillful in evoking the ghost of that Pearce that, alas, no longer exists today and probably won't return.