Twilight Ritual
The Ritual

1. Colloquial part of the review, which serves as a preface.

I, myself (yes, I) like eighties-music.

What can I do?

Especially when it is immediately recognizable, when its being dated is part of its essence; when the crackle and creak of dust on vinyl adds an extra texture to the already sublime sound.

And when I get a crazy craving, which happens occasionally, to listen to the most blunt and soothing eighties-music (the kind that you hear and must hear that it's eighties!) and I have already exhausted myself

with “Siberia” by Diaframma,

with “Tin Drum” by Japan,

with “Black Celebration” by Depeche Mode,

with “Bad Moon Rising” by Sonic Youth,

with “Rio” by Duran Duran,

with “Metamatic” by J. Foxx,

with “Replicas” by Numan (yes, I know, it's from 1979),

with “Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia” by Sakamoto,

with “Desaparecido” by Litfiba,

with “Vienna” by Ultravox-without-exclamation-point,

with “Tangram” by Tangerine Dream,

with the “Blade Runner” soundtrack by Vangelis,

with Battiato ranging between the white boar and faraway worlds (which never hurts),

with etcetera,

there are two paths:

1) either I go back a few years, to draw from late-seventies-music (no prog, please!, which is the least eighties-sounding music that can be found recorded on analog media) that already sounds eighties;

2) or I look for other eighties-music that you hear and must hear that it's eighties.

In this case, while frantically seeking eighties-music, I found, in the debut album by the Belgians “Twilight Ritual,” also some late-seventies-music.

At first glance, I don't like the band's name: it sounds too much like dark heads with black t-shirts and greasy long hair.

And yet...

And yet it is a concentration of eighties-music that you hear it is-eighties, but with feet firmly planted in the darkest kraut-rock à la Klaus Schulze of the previous decade.

2. Serious part of the review.

2.1 General description (in the darkest suburbs of New-Wave)

The duo “Twilight Ritual,” composed of the Belgians Geert Coppens and Peter Bonne, made their quiet debut in 1982, with the album —at the time distributed only on cassette— “The Ritual.” But their rise (??) took place with the LP “Rituals” four years later.

If originality in titles doesn't seem to be their strength, the same cannot be said about their music, which is a calibrated mix of cosmic music like “Irrlicht” and/or “Zeit,” of raven melancholy in the style of “Amon Düül” coldly sublimated through the use of blatantly synth sounds and immediately catchy rhythms that could hardly fail to tire even the most motivated listener.

2.2 Interlude: moments of lyricism (truly unjustified)

This dark blend immerses the user in an atmosphere reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where the frenzy of madness and the swirling of shadows long left dormant can finally flow through the ocular pavilions, penetrating into the most hidden recesses of the boundless inner cosmos. Down there, in that cave of consciousness, a ritual of unholy ferocity has been ongoing unknown to you for centuries. This twilight ritual, once forgotten, resurfaces in you, ready listeners to receive it. And presiding over this ritual are the two augurs of twilight: Coppens and Bonne.

2.3 Detailed description of the tracks: do it yourself

1) “Splintered Images Of Oz”

2) “Surrounded”

3) “Webb-Men”

4) “They Are We”

5) “Ever Changes”

6) “Fading Me”

7) “A Chrome Entrance”

8) “Elegy”

9) “Up To Now”

10) “Filters Of Density”

3. Conclusion

There are albums that need many listens to bring out the inexhaustible richness they carry within. Albums that resonate within us in an exponentially amplified way when we recognize them as our own: when, in other words, we know them by heart. Only then, only instinctively knowing their development, can one appreciate every detail and grasp the general atmosphere they indelibly leave imprinted on us.

In this case, quite the opposite happens.

If from the get-go the tracks enchant the well-disposed listener, leading them by the hand to the end, by the second listen already your attention wanes, and you feel more dragged than led.

The situation, finally, becomes drastically worse with the third listen, beyond which you feel like giving up going further.

Therefore, I recommend you listen to it in its entirety once.

But just once.

P.S. No dark head with greasy long hair was harmed neither before nor during nor after the writing of this review.