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The time has come: the supreme moment is here.
The great shaman, the expressionist of the voice, the bard of the muddy swamp has returned. No, we're not talking about Paolini or Corona, but one of the most significant artists of the contemporary musical era (and this is neither hyperbole nor exaggeration): Scott Engel, also known as Scott Walker. The former child prodigy of the boy band avant la lettre, The Walker Brothers, Hippy-yè-yè - Beatlesmania-screaming girls-quiff-corridorsperfect-dreamorchestras first, handsome-dark-franksinatra-shadowyjaquesbrel-withorchestralaccoutrementsLygetian then, followed by the cosmic void, the search for self, far from the spotlight to coin, to sculpt a sound, initially with the expressionist voice, stamped in the false return of the Walker Bros, "Nite Flights," where four superb compositions ("Shutout," "Fat Mama Kick," "Nite Flights," "The Electrician") stand out above pop-rock, disintegrating the sugar and honey of the two remaining fake Walker brothers, returning to us what has now become a cult artist (ask David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, to believe it). Then, from there onward, the icy, impenetrable, perfect, crystalline works, "Climate of Hunter" (1984), "Tilt" (1995), "The Drift" (2006), "Bish Bosch" (2012). Total works, whose understanding, assimilation and, consequently, appreciation require time, patience, and dedication.
But once you've found the keystone, you remain intoxicated, purified, fed, and quenched for eons. A logical continuation of this admirable musical trajectory, the collaboration with the drone-metal duo Sunn O))) that responds to the name "Soused": four long compositions, written by the master with the monolithic duo in mind, whose guitar bombardments do not steal the scene but serve as a perfect mélange to Walker's spoken-sung delivery, which, rather than retrace the apocalyptic clichés of his recent works, is reborn to new life, proving to be even more accessible to those unaccustomed to such sounds.
The program concludes with the superb "Lullaby", once lent, (precisely in 2000) to the divine Ute Lemper, in the admirable "Punishing Kiss".
Genius needs no further explanation or superfluous description.
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