Orchestra Noir
What If...

Does anyone remember the project L'Orchestre Noir? 

In the late nineties, Tony Wakeford, driven by insane ambitions of grandeur, put his legendary Sol Invictus aside for a moment to gather a group of French musicians around him to give vent to his classical composing ambitions. However, this experience did not prove to be thrilling and ended up exhausting itself over the course of a couple of albums: the sloppy and shaky "Cantos" and the already better "11", two works that cruelly showcased the significant compositional limits of Wakeford, who later wisely decided to go back to dedicating himself full-time to his Sol Invictus and eventually channel his symphonic temptations into them, certainly achieving better results (as evidenced by the splendid "In a Garden Green").

In truth, the urge for classical music has never completely uprooted from Wakeford's mind, for whom probably "rock" (in a broad sense) and the song format, in general, have turned out over time to be like an uncomfortable and limiting armor, and proof of this is last year's solo album "Not All of Me Will Die": an almost instrumental album, poised between ambient, minimal electronics, and chamber music.

We arrive then in 2010 with the release of "What If...", released under the name Orchestra Noir, which is not the simple resurrection of the project mentioned at the beginning, but a new experience this time based on "London foundations", born in 2006 from the collaboration with pianist Richard Moult, already a collaborator of Current 93; an experience that had already borne the EP "The Affordable Holmes" (inspired by the soundtrack of a television series starring Sherlock Holmes!!), but which only now finds full completion with a true full-length.

Now having been orphans for too many years of Sol Invictus (since "The Devil's Steed" dates back to 2004), we thus approach listening to this new output from the prolific Wakeford, who in recent years has preferred to focus on his solo career and one-off projects. "The House on the Hill" starts quietly and immediately a distressing thought haunts me: "How did I fall for it again? Why on earth did I buy it? Maybe I didn’t know?". And indeed the first notes confirm all the negative prejudices one might harbor about such a project: elementary melodies, puerile arrangements, here and there even some dissonant harmony. It's all been heard a thousand times before. In short, yet another rickety setup put together by the stubborn Wakeford, who, deprived of his guitar and his apocalyptic folk (evidently the only thing he's good at), ends up falling into the unfortunate category of the mediocre musician.

Things improve already starting from the next track "Bedlam", opened by the tragic rising of Moult's piano and torn by Wakeford's desperate singing (both epic and tearful, fragile and indestructible, suffering and detached): a combination that will constitute the connecting thread of an album that, in its forty-five-minute duration, will nonetheless change moods and landscapes, transitioning from the warm sun of the morning to the fiery red of the twilight.

If the intent remains the same as that which inspired the genesis of L'Orchestre Noir (which was to capture and develop a "pure" artistic expression, entirely freed from the "contaminated" modern world), substantial differences are nonetheless detectable in this "What If...", which presents us with a more mature and self-aware artist. Because "What If..." represents the next step in a personal and unique artistic journey that started long ago (with the punk of Crisis) and seems momentarily to pause on a strange form of apocalyptic chamber music that, step by step, Wakeford has managed to refine over the years: the only dimension, it seems, where our Minstrel of the End today manages to feel at ease.

Compared to the French project, Orchestra Noir thus bears a more intimate and personal vision, entirely free from the "ideological" dictates that had animated the two works from the late nineties. Purged of the over-the-top symphonism, the sharp inquisitorial tones, and the martial gloom that animated his pseudo-predecessors, "What If..." primarily bases its foundation on the melancholic strolling of Moult’s piano (also on the mellotron and synthesizers), and the decorations (including dissonant ones) of an ensemble of strings and winds (notably the excellent performance on oboe and English horn by Mark Baigent, among the first to join the project, and the third signatory of the tracks).

It doesn't even give up the ethereal warblings of folk-singer Autumn Grieve (already a collaborator of Wakeford), nor the rough jazz improvisations of Alexandria Lawrence (who sings in the first part of "A Second Before"), as in "What If..." all the artistic impulses of Wakeford from the last ten years converge (folk, songwriting, chamber music, ambient, electronic, jazz, avant-garde etc.), obviously shaped into a coherent and pervasive sound flow suffused with the indissoluble poetics of the End that has always characterized Wakeford, who contributes his usual passion, honesty, integrity, alongside the bass, electronic manipulations, and the voice. Much voice, so much so that "What If..." is not even an instrumental album as we might have expected, but rather a collection of bucolic ballads that develop in a free form, in a continuous accumulation of images, memories, sounds, visions evoking an Arcadia lost in the mists of time, taking on the appearance of a quiet, dreary, breezy English countryside.

Examining the album track by track, one cannot help but agree that the result is ultimately something inconsistent, fluctuating, where inspiration comes and goes, but above all where truly convincing moments are scarce. If you look at the whole, however, we can provide a certainly more generous judgment: even in this circumstance, Wakeford proves to be a passionate painter who, with broad strokes, neglecting details, faithfully portrays the dark landscapes that torment his soul: a soul that, as it progresses on its journey in the earthly world, seems already yearning to connect with the Beyond, surrendering to the nostalgia of a past, of an innocence that will never return, like Emperor Hadrian of Yourcenar, who, lingering in the face of death, gazing upon "familiar shores, the things we will certainly never see again," seeks to enter death with eyes open...