English translation of the German article (by Oliver):
| Love Leads To Death: Poesie Noire "The only constant at us are the subjects of the lyrics: they're always dealing with love and death. However these two contrasts have so much in common. Our lyrics will always be intellectual, because a name like Poesie Noire forbits to set dull verses to music. The music on the other hand changes continuously. It corresponds to the influences we are exposed to. On our current album we left quite far the EBM-idea. We used a lot of acustic instruments - produced real Pop. Who knows - perhaps we are soon interested in Heavy Metal and so we will of course record a Heavy Metal disc. Form a musical point of view everything is is possible with us."
Jo (la bête noire) Casters is a junkie, who permanently grins stupidly and suffers of an alarming infirmity of concentration. Nevertheless he has recorded with "Love Is Colder Than Death" one of the most beautiful, most feeling and sadset albums of the dying away decade. This album revels in melancholy and acustic sounds but is not totally doing without sythetic rhythmics. The first successfull crossover between Pop and EBM. Some melodies almost sound joyous but this cheerfulness is immediately washed away by the myth- and disasterous lyrics. Jo to the principle of Poesie Noire: "Death, Reincarnation and Black Magic always fascinated me as long as I can think. Already at the age of twelve I wrote 'obscure' poems that dealt with magic and life after death. Actually I am doing nothing else today, but things are more mellow of course. I studied three years philosophy and dealt a lot with Satre and Existencialism, but also with Diabolism and such things. All this merged into my music - I couldn't do anything else than calling the group Poesie Noire." "The lyrics are always in centre for me. The music just has the task to 'accompany' the feelings and ideas of the lyrics respectively intensify them. Sometimes we have a good instrumental part but no lyrics for it. Then we leave this part out. Only the message matters to us. Poesie Noire is basically literature set to music. Poesie Noire stands for the project founded in 1985. Behind this name hides generally speaking Jo Casters, who was born in Leuven and now lives in Brussels. But also the other both members also contribute their share: with Herman Gillis (who left a New-Beat-"forge", because the production of danceware was threatening him to get a nervous breakdown) the music is created, with singer Marianne Valvekens the lyrics. Jo about the 1988 album Tetra: "Some years ago we made an album that dealt with Zen-Buddhism: Tetra. On this record are melodies that cause special feelings to the listener, because they were conceived that way. The listener knows nothing about that. But subconscious he will react in the way we imagined it when we were composing. The sounds are arranged in such a special way that there is nothing else he can do. The zen-buddhism touched lyrics additionally support to lead him on that track. We are dealing with such strange things." |
by Patrik Kruse & David Hulet, translation by Oliver. |
19/04/1999 |