The very healthy collaboration between noise artiste extraordinaire Philippe Petit and the gravelled voice wonder of Eugene Robinson is on its third instalment, and here the action — if you want to call it that — takes place in some god-forbidden forest way up in hills. The only way that you could possibly find yourself in these hills is to be completely lost and at the mercy of whatever malevolence it has to offer.
It is not a comfortable place to be and the pretty guitar figure that accompanies Eugene’s preacher rumbling in opener “Augur” is one of only two things of sweetness in a swirling, foreboding environment. It moves around you and through you, like you are being subsumed, somehow drawn towards the chapel that lurks, stoic and seething in the midst of the forest. There is one other element of sweetness in the flailing murk, and that is the soulful voice of Percy Edwards that acts as a counterpoint to Eugene’s increasingly urgent mutterings and proclamations. He seems to drift over the top of the gathering storm like a siren; still drawing you in, but with a lightness that takes you by surprise like the velvet cosh.
All the way through Chapel In The Pines, this juxtaposition takes place, as if the youthful-sounding Percy is some apparition, a vision of Eugene as a young man. Even if the mania of the sonic backdrop lifts — as it does a little on “Further Father” — Eugene’s whisperings give the impression of someone being lost in the woods, living on their wits, trying to stay one step ahead of whatever malevolence is or isn’t lurking in the pines, but is most likely lurking in their psyche. Philippe floods us with sensory overload as the benediction is read over and over. I guess if you say it often enough, it has to work, right?There is a touch of Tom Waits‘s delivery here and there; the relative peace of “Remember Me, You Three” is probably more harrowing for its calmness, and the spoken word here smacks of destitution and despair — but it is the rambling final track “The Restored” that takes the album to its logical conclusion. It gives us an opportunity to experience the full range of what Philippe can do with his electronic effects; the air is thick with tendrils of sound, sucking and squelching in the leaf litter under the trees, curling around shoes and poking at eyes and ears as the preacher rails in a random fashion, recounting the words to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in a kind of reverie. Things hush for a while and at that point Eugene starkly tells us that “a lot of bodies ain’t been found yet”. It is the sound of someone spiralling into insanity and after the last visit from his ghost self, the album ends abruptly, and we are left at a loss to fully understand what has come before. All I know is that the Chapel In The Pines is not a place to try and find unless you really are able to deal with the consequences.
Eugene and Philippe have built a sound world here like some kind of audio verite of a descent into a personal hell; but the journey is compelling and the interaction between the swollen, scuffed noisescapes and the scattered, at times poignant, vocals is really worthwhile. I wonder where they will end up next?-Mr Olivetti-
