The Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus
After The End

"The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus": behind this long and curious name lies one of the least showy realities of that constellation of bands and artists that we can classify within the vast area of neo-folk. I say "least showy" and not "mysterious" because if little is really known about RAIJ, it's not due to a calculated marketing strategy of "mystery" (as often happens in these circles), but due to the reserved nature of the band's members and their evident desire to stay away from the spotlight. Objective achieved, given that the information related to this unknown English band is indeed extremely scarce.

The curious and long name, first of all, draws inspiration from the last film of master Luis Bunuel "That Obscure Object of Desire", from 1977: the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus is actually the fictional terrorist group that, along with far-left movements, makes its appearance at the end of the movie, disrupting the Paris of the two tormented protagonists. In 1985, instead, and precisely in Liverpool, the band was born, composed of Jon Egan (ex-Dead Trout, do you know them? I don’t), David Seddon, Paul Boyce, Sue Boyce, and Les Hampson (while Bronek Kramm, Angela Taylor, and “Bill” would later join): an exhilarating musical experience, which however had a very short life on this world, just enough time to give birth to two albums and two EPs. The last concert: in 1998, then oblivion.

An oblivion that lasted for fifteen years, until the release, just these days, of a box set "After The End" (distributed in only five hundred copies), which unearths the entire discography of the band, including some remixes and unpublished works dated 2013. Whether it is a new beginning, it is still too early to say; the intentions of the band, which among other things supposed to have resumed a timid concert activity since last June, have never been clear and probably never will be. But it's already great news to be able to finally access their music today thanks to this providential publication, and now I’ll explain why.

There are many cases where popularity doesn’t even remotely coincide with the artistic value of the proposal, but it is important to state that RAIJ are not unknown and therefore (consequently, automatically) super cool: their music is truly something special and wonderful, and the fact that we might never have been able to listen to it sends a chill down the spine during listening. I anticipate right away that I will be forced to go on at length, but keep in mind that: 1) this review covers three (that is, the three CDs contained in the box, about one hundred and fifty minutes of music); 2) given the lack of information shared online, it seems a good and fair thing to write at least one explanatory page in Italian to tell us a little about RAIJ.

That, in extreme summary, they could be defined as a beautiful hybrid between Dead Can Dance and the maturity albums of Current 93 (those of "Thunder Perfect Mind", just to be clear). But the stylistic closeness (mostly due to the plunge into folk/bucolic atmospheres combined with a dark/industrial avant-garde that taints its mystical evolutions) to certain things published in the early nineties by David Tibet and co. shouldn’t lead us to catalog them as apocalyptic folk tout court. Indeed, the range of sounds embraced appears far broader: European folk, ethnic music, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern flavors, sacred music, mysticism (and it is necessary to specify that, despite drawing heavily from Christian tradition, RAIJ do not define themselves as a Christian band), without neglecting expeditions into the territories of industrial, noise, and avant-garde. The predominance of the female voice reconnects the band to the ethereal trend, but the richness of the offering and the fact that when the band was composing and releasing records certain labels were not yet in vogue, surely makes us think that RAIJ deserves a special mention.

So, summing up: one blindly buys a box set of well three CDs by an unknown band from the dark area and derivatives, in the middle of summer no less, with the vague feeling that the flop is just around the corner, and instead finds themselves living a shocking musical experience, a discovery that unfolds album after album, track after track, in a crescendo of emotions that might sound something like this: 1) Oh, nice, these guys aren't bad; 2) Wow, I didn't expect this stuff; 3) Come on, these are phenomenal!!! And I'll tell you more: this music also fits with the season we're living in, in fact it might be the most "summer" music that could reach the ears of dark art enthusiasts.

It starts with the good "The Gift of Tears" (1987), the first album licensed by the band. It opens with “Come Holy Spirit”, almost ten minutes that already make us understand the coordinates on which our listening will be set: acoustic guitar, flute, ethereal interplay between female and male voices, but with a tribal base and a prominent bass that already explains the stylistic hallmark of Our guys. The weight of the percussion and the rhythmic apparatus in general, the imaginative use of winds and ethnic instruments, are elements that distance RAIJ from the minimalist bases to which the apocalyptic folk fan is generally accustomed right from the start. Apocalyptic folk, however, emerges already from the next track, the excellent “Tales from Europe,” dominated by a hypnotic flute, a drum machine in crescendo, and the rusty, reverberant sound of sampled voices. But beyond adjectives and labels, it is important to emphasize the impression of “beautiful hearing” that the platter evokes in the listener from the start. The RAIJ offering is varied, daring to border on ambient/ethnic experimentation of the instrumental “De Profundis” (with strong mystical ascendancy), to return to folk ballads (“The Singing Ringing Tree” among all) that, if we could use contemporary comparison terms, would bring to mind the ethereal-folk of bands like Unto Ashes and In Gowan Ring (let’s remember anyway that we’re talking about 1987, the year the “Brown Book” by Death in June was released formalizing the existence of the genre itself, while Current 93 at the time had just started to play with the folk material, with still unripe and not always convincing results). And just because we talk about Current 93, how not to mention the intertwining acoustic guitar and flute of “Beauty after the Fall,” which closely resembles the settings of the already mentioned “Thunder Perfect Mind” (which however will be released five years later)? With the last four tracks (“Dream,” “Lament,” “Transfiguration,” and “Communion,” probably to be seen as a single suite) the ethnic inclination of the ensemble ends up prevailing, as they are based on percussion, mantra-like choirs (where present), and pervaded by an intangible mystical aura. These are the RAIJ of their debut: an already mature band, comprised of competent musicians, capable of building a captivating sound, rich in cues and inventions that have little to do with the minimalism (often a forced choice for purely technical reasons) prevalent in the genre.

On these bases, the second LP "Mirror" (1991) developed, but the discussion shifts to a more advanced front of experimentation, stylistic contamination, and artistic maturity. The initial “Shadowlands,” while presenting a perfectly oiled engine, differs little from what was done in the past; the surprising sax solo at the end of “Inmaculado,” however, is a nice surprise: never before had something like this been heard within the narrow confines of apocalyptic folk (between elegant jazz and eighties pop!, all over a backdrop of rising percussion and unsettling keyboards), demonstrating that the music of RAIJ is something free and absolutely out of the box. The swirling beats of the drum machine, the electric guitar feedbacks, the broken phrasings, and effects of “Hymn to Dionysus,” as well as the classically played piano (beautifully played) that carries the sparse sampled voices of “Nostalgia” torrentially (with even a finale entrusted to solemn church choirs), the melancholic tango of “Theme de “L’Homme qui ne croyait pas en lui-meme” (with the inevitable saloon sax in the background), the sharp turn towards more rustic folklore with the gem of a folk-ballad that is “Psalm,” or the industrial-like rush of “Nativity,” based on electrifying guitars and an uneasy megaphone-altered voice, the dark tribalism of “Man of Sorrows,” finally, are irrefutable confirmation: RAIJ love to mix sacred and profane, continuously, bewildering the listener with sudden changes of course, all marked by an unpredictability that is never an end in itself, but dictated by inspiration, conceptual consistency, and mastery of the expressive means at their disposal.

The RAIJ would then come out in 1993 with a juicy reissue of their first album, also containing the EP "Le Liturgie pour le Fin du Temps," and in 1995 they would conclude their career with another EP, the splendid "Paradis," their artistic epitaph. All this, and something more (including three unpublished works and a live track), is present in the third CD of the box, collected under the name “A Rumour of Angels,” which in my opinion remains the most beautiful testimony of the band, a testimony today polished as it should be (including excellent remixes) in the present and providential “After the End.” The most beautiful testimony because the surprising rhythms and dub basses of “Cantata Sacra” (the first unreleased track proposed) and “Le Monde du Silence,” hypnotic in the former, pressing in the latter, place the RAIJ on a further level of emancipation from the canons of apocalyptic folk from which they started. The ever more cared-for production allows the many merits of the band to stand out in all their splendor, while the addition of a bit of unobtrusive electronics modernizes the sound, making it even more current and up to date. “Diae Irae,” with its unsettling percussion and upfront effects, even projects Our guys towards cosmic shores. The live rendition of “Pslam,” on the other hand, expands the original to make it a twelve-minute psychedelic trip: an emotional rollercoaster dictated by the wavering flow of the accordion and the accelerations/decelerations of the rhythmic compartment. But the prize for best track (and probably of their entire career) goes to the majestic “Paradis” (another eleven excellent minutes), opened by a desolate soliloquy of alien female voice, only to be abruptly slashed halfway through by rough electric guitars and relentlessly rising percussion: a restless mystical boiling that reaches peaks of intensity rarely heard and that directly calls the most metaphysical Swans, with whom our RAIJ have shown to have more than one point in common. If the subsequent “She Moved Through the Fair” brings us back to comfortable folk tones, the sly insinuation of the flute first (hypnotizing!), and the river-of-a-solo of the electrified violin later (captivating!), highlight once again the excellent preparation of the musicians and the importance of the instrumental dimension, where the astonishing female voice, a splendid siren capable of casually switching from evocative recitation to steep warbles that are supernatural, illuminates the tortuous artistic path of the British ensemble. The unpublished works “Suspended upon the Cross” and “After the End” add little to what has been said so far, but they fuel the flame of hope, testifying a return that is not only expressed in the live dimension, but also with a much more interesting studio entrance.

In short, beyond the difficult availability of the product, “After The End” remains a must for all those who love the sounds just described. Now it's up to you to make it yours as soon as possible!