HATHOR

Third Igor album in so many years, and this on brings yet another dimension, without straying from his gnarl musical aesthetics. We're still dealing with an electronic-sprinkled classical modern-symphonic canvas, and this time, the French narratives are a lot more present, something roughly useful (yet cheesy and embarrassing, like so many narratives) if you wabnt to make something of the concept album this is. As the album's title suggest, we're dealing with a pre-Roman and pre-christian sects and their related religious mythology, and the afterlife. Roughly, we're dealing with the Egyptian death cults and whatever Satanist bullshit that ensued in the last two centuries: read, watch and listen to the Lucifer Rising project with Jimmy Page, Bobby Beausoleil and Alistair Crowe links, for another similar example (with some incredibly excellent music. Anyway, this third Hathor album present a bland and blanc artwork, got released Atlantic, but did not feature the Triangle pop group, as its predecessors did. Instead, we find organist Estellet-Brun, Guy Boyer, the Ensemble Polyphonique (this album is much more vocal and lyrical than its predecessors) and the pop group Pachacamac.

In some ways, Hathor is Igor's gloomiest album ever, often sinister, but not really scary: actually if you're an atheist, this is pretty laughable. You could imagine a clown-ier or kitschy Shub-Niggurath (for those who know them), but the quality of the music and soundscapes avoid ridicule or pastiche. The nearly-symphonic electronic soundscapes opening the album could have you think of Tangerine Schulze intro with aerial choirs, but soon enough the 'grandiose' narratives pull you in the satan-derived concept, before diving us in the sea of oscillating and pulsing electronic sounds and hypnotizing rhythms of Grand Sabbath and Rituel De Guerre. A bit later, the crowd-rising harangues and the Latin mass incantations are downright silly, and will most-likely make you reach for that ffwd button on your remote control, past the first few listens. Once the music returns, we still have to deal with dronal choirs, but the sinister farce has stopped, to leave a haunting soundscape of Amenthi, but it overstays its welcome. Howling owls greet you in the night-ending dawn (Aurora), with some soothing liturgical organ.

A thankfully fairly-short album Hathor might have gained somewhat from being a wordless concept and maybe gain a few more instrumental passages. Indeed past these doubtful conceptual meanderings, we're left with a very groundbreaking electronic soundscape album that can only impress the historically-conscious music-heads. Too bad this would- be masterpiece of an album is littered with esoteric junk, though.