Paysage D'Hiver
Kerker

The darkness is chilling. It certainly isn't because spirits and ghosts are waiting there in the shadows, ready to make every childish fear of ours come true; when we pulled the blankets over our heads, we did it because we feared seeing something move in the darkness of our room.

Now, on the other hand, many of us would be happy to break the anguish of the night by meeting one of those creatures that terrify children. I put "Kerker" (Dungeons), one of the many demos by Paysage d'Hiver, a one-man band unknown from a member of Dark Space, who are also fairly unknown.

One song, 35 minutes. As an adult, you realize that what truly scares you about the night are certainly not ghosts, but silence; silence that allows every little nocturnal reflection - sad thoughts, deviant thoughts. Silence that the mind desperately fills in every way, imagining adventures, intriguing stories, elaborating memories of the day just passed. At night, that sleep of reason so often cited by scholars and philosophers but rarely experienced materializes: it's something everyone should try. Feel how thoughts flow into nothingness, piling up, overlapping, remaining unresolved, tormenting.

While waiting to experience this "nightly delirium," you can always put Kerker on the turntable and immerse yourself in its reality. Certainly, the listening is particularly difficult: every objective judgment should be suspended in the absence of solid footholds, of valid reasons to condemn or praise what you're listening to. Personally, I invite anyone who has identified even a little with the previous lines to embrace the experience in question; it's not a record that will be listened to more than three or four times a year, but each of these will surely be a unique moment.

In Kerker, at least three or four songs merge, all at the same time, in the same way as the thoughts mentioned before; a track of lamentations, in the distance, remains constant for much of the record, almost imperceptible and left to itself; a second more "musical" track is quite evident during the first half: it's a piece that echoes somewhere in the individual memory, always overshadowed by other noises. A piece difficult to pinpoint, fast, that could very well be Black metal, with its pounding drums. Then effects, more or less natural, more or less real, that make listening arduous but contribute to defining the existence of these "dungeons" (Kerker).

Over all these tracks, the densest fog covers everything in vanity: this effect is probably created by keyboards constantly reproducing ominous vibrations, similar to those present when the clouds collide. After a more relaxed moment, which occupies the central part, the record closes with a moment that mirrors the first: only the vibrations become less strong, leaving room for a double bass drum roll in the background, supported by other keyboards. It's difficult to do justice to a work as visceral as Kerker without listening to it; and above all, it's difficult to appreciate: Nortt, Abruptum, and funeral doom are another story, splendid universes where there is room for melody, for musical instruments, for voice: the references here are all to Dark Ambient music, but that produced by the darkest bands. It recalls certain moments in Burzum's albums: but here the music isn't entrusted with an introduction or an interlude, rather it constitutes the entire work.

Paysage D'Hiver is one of those underground realities that are setting fire (or chilling) the European underground (just as Vinterriket) finding comparisons worldwide (Elysian Blaze in Australia, Velvet Cacoon in America); real music, perhaps not always beautiful, but certainly more heartfelt and sincere than most of the contemporary top black metal.

This Kerker is one of the band's most interesting chapters, which in just a few years has already produced a sizeable number of demos; in particular, "Paysage D'Hiver" and "Shattegang" have each in their own way helped to revive the situation of extreme music after 2000.