01	Incipit Tragedia						15:46
	02	Cabine 67						05:55
	03	Yog Sothoth						12:27
	04	La Balade De Lenore						08:58
	05	Delear Prius						04:03
	06	J'ai Vu Naguere En Peinture Les Harpies Ravissant Le Repas De Phynee						04:19

©1996 TIME LIFE BOOKS B.V.

Shub Niggurath
Les Morts Vont Vite
Gazul / Musea (GA 8613.AR)
France 1986

Alain Ballaud, bass;
Franck Coulaud, drums;
Franck W. Fromy, guitar;
Jean-Luc Herve, piano, organ, harmonium;
Ann Stewart, voice;
Veronique Verdier, trombone;
with Michel Kervinio, drums and percussion

Tracklist:
1. Incipit tragaedia - 16:39
2. Cabine 67 - 6:16
3. Yog sothoth - 13:07
4. La ballade de Lenore - 9:30
5. Delear prius - 4:12
6. J'ai vu naguere en peinture les Harpies ravissant le repas de Phynee - 4:17

total time 60:19

dom

Ia!Ia!, indeed. The music made by this French avant-zeuhl band (named after a deity created by noted horror/sci-fi author H.P. Lovecraft) is a major development of Magma's eerie soundscapes produced a decade previously, and upon the dark textures of bands such as Univers Zero and Art Zoyd. Pounding, opressive percussion, clear soprano lead, massively distorted bass, apocalyptic, explosive guitar. I can safely say that this is the fiercest album I've ever heard. And it's not just its fierceness, but the overwhelming musicality. Each member contributes to a mysterious, fairly frightening atmosphere. Despite the raging, almost anarchic guitar solos, and the barely-in-check rhythmic pounce, there is never the feeling of indulgence or lack of focus. The musicians have stated that it wasn't their intention to make 'dark' music per se, but extreme sounds. This music is extremely engaging, conjuring any number of black images and a kind of heresy of the senses. The sound? Well, there are references to Magma, with the operatic vocal and throbbing bass, but Christian Vander's band never sounded so intimidating, so gigantic. That is not to say this music is lumbering or heavy-handed, but massive, overwhelming, seductive. This is not for the musically faint or soft-hearted. This is for the experimental, dramatic (if all drama be equal), introspective. Incredible music.


brandon

This band is most often compared to Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, and Magma; I find the Magma comparison to be a bit misleading. My choice would be Present: the screaming, tortured guitar found here is like nothing that's found on any of the former three bands' releases. Absolutely huge bass and aggressive, dissonant piano work round out the instrumentation. The drumming is also very effective, though I feel Daniel Denis' work is still better. Vocals - female soprano - are clear, high, and add a strange sort of mysterious, foreboding beauty to the whole affair. Everything is about as dark as you might expect from a band that's compared to the four groups mentioned above, perhaps even darker: Magma had nothing on this, nor even Univers Zero except perhaps on Heresie (a good description of Les Morts Vont Vite, in fact, might be "Heresie with more teeth"). Let's use the fourth track as a representative one: it begins with quietly haunting organ soon overlaid with those darkly beautiful vocals; the quiet opening explodes abruptly into pounding percussion, bass distorted beyond all recognition, and guitar screaming faintly in the distance. The guitar eventually claws its way to the fore of this absolutely killer instrumental freakout, which finally ends with blasts from the trombone and some fast vocal lines. This is about eight and a half minutes of the most dark, intense, and frankly enjoyable music in this style that I've ever heard. And the whole disc is like this! So: this is fucking huge. Get it.




SHUB-NIGGURATH

[France]

"Shub Niggurath" (86)
"Les Morts Vont Vite" (86)
"Live" (89)
"C'etaient de Tres Grands Vents" (91)c


Shub-Niggurath is music from the Art Zoyd / Magma / Univers Zero school, but much more dense, dark, and atonal, ranging from beautiful to frightening.
It's great stuff, impossible to describe in words accurately, but I WILL say it's probably not for everyone. If you like the aforementioned three bands, then chances are you'll like these guys, and if you don't - you wont. If you're not sure about it, I'd start out with something by one of the other bands first.
This RIO band has been compared to Magma, but "C'etaient de Tres Grands Vents" displays few characteristics with which we usually associate Magma: furious rhythms, Gregorian chanting, and bleating horn races. Instead we find a nearly all-instrumental, only occasionally rhythmic, dark nightmare. The opening track, "Glaciations", builds from a faint hum to a distorted cacophony of clangs and bangs, Frith-like scratchy guitar feedback, and growling bass - similar in spirit to Henry Cow's "Western Culture" period. The rest of the album follows similar strategies. This album will probably attract hardcore RIO-heads, but those who need symphonic underpinnings and/or harmonic development will more than likely dismiss this as an abstract mess. Perhaps that's the main fault I find with this album. Unlike Univers Zero and Henry Cow, Shub Niggurath never really resolves their formidable noise attacks with any sense of convergence or development. Most of the album is nearly inaudible, and even when it does turn up the juice, it doesn't pack the emotional whallop of Univers Zero's "La Faulx" or Henry Cow's "Half the Sky". So in that respect its a dissapointment; not for what you hear (which is shred-worthy in and of itself), but for what you don't hear.
Spoken of in the same breath as Magma for some weird reason. Shub-Niggurath are also often described as "fusion." Both these descriptions are wildly misleading. Imagine Univers Zero's "La Faulx" but without the catchy bits! There is little identifiable melody, it's mad drums, distorted bass and guitar and wild horns in a very dark mixture of quiet haunting backgrounds and insane crescendo. It's completely fantastic. Darkly beautiful.
"Promethee" from "C'etaient de Tres Grands Vents" (this track was called "Promethee Foudroye" on their earlier live Auricle tape) has Stella Vander-style vocals which are operatic and hair raising. Incredible.
Dark, spacious and often disturbing are the three best adjectives to describe Shub-Niggurth's "C'etaient De Tres Grands Vents" CD released by Musea. The phrase "Shub-Niggurath" comes from the writings of one of the masters of the horror genre, H.P. Lovecraft. The music on "C'etaient..." would fit very well as a soundtrack for many of Lovecraft's stories.
Instrumentation consists of bass (Alain Ballaud), electric guitar, piano, harmonium (Jean-Luc Herve), drums (either Michel Kervinio or Edward Perraud, both on "Promethee"), bass trombones (Veronique Verdier), and occasional voice (Sylvette Claudet). Analogy is perhaps the best way to describe Shub-Niggurath's music. Imagine a mix of Present or early Univers Zero with Henry Cow improvisations, playing while on downers. "C'etaient..." opens with the seven minute "Glaciations". The song consists of quiet, icy emanations broken by occasional fissues of frenzied drums, bass and guitar. "Ocean" is four minutes of meandering trombone improvisation and distorted guitar, followed by one minute of intense zeuhlish improvisation that calls to mind Happy Family, then a long fade into nothing. "Promethee" is a clear vocal line sung against crashing, discordant guitar chords. The vocals are eventually replaced with meandering bass, much like the trombone of "Ocean". Herve just bangs out distorted guitar chords for the entire five minutes. I think you are beginning to get the picture. Because the instrumentation and improvisation is used sparse, the music is very spacious, often almost ambient in nature, perhaps as a result of influences from some avant-garde classical composers such as Penderecki. Yet, the atmosphere is always very tense, and songs don't always have detectable direction or musically resolved ending. Shub-Niggurath do not play music for casual listening andgenerally only for the experimentally-minded and those predisposed toward the avant-garde.

Mike Taylor



Shub-Niggurath - History
Shub-Niggurath formed in 1983/94; six people with the goal of "the most extreme expression of [our] sensibility" and diverse influences from electroacoustic and modern jazz to 17th century Italian and contemporary classical.

Alain Ballaud: Bass
Franck Coulaud: Percussion
Frank Fromy: Guitar, Percussion
Jean-Luc Herve: Harmonium, Piano, Organ
Ann Stewart: Vocals
Veronique Verdier: Trombone, Bass

Their first untitled tape was released in 1985 and received quite a remarkable reception from the relevant specialist parts of the music press. The intensity of the music, controlled wonderfully as it was, became noted by many and much was expected of their planned debut album. During the wait for this, in 1986 someone with a sense of humour saw fit to include a live version of a track from this tape ("Yog-sothoth") on a compilation called Chant d'amour. Somewhat ironic given Shub-Niggurath's place as dark fertility goddess in the Lovecraft mythos. The same line-up recorded the classic Les morts vont vite for the then inchoate Musea label in 1987 and the tone of the reviews escalated considerably; Alan Freeman of Audion magazine was prompted to remark at the time that Shub-Niggurath were "one of the most important bands to come out of France in the past eight years". Indeed, as a debut album -- indeed as an album of any stage of a career -- Les morts vonts vite is quite astounding. Their debut self-confessedly caught them at the peak of their powers at the time. This is quite obvious when listening to it. It was reissued by Musea in November 1997 on C, including two rare tracks from compilations (see section on their music).

The album apparently sold quite well, particularly overseas and the band were reportedly happy with Musea's distribution. Later in 1987, Musea issued the well-know Enneade compilation of zeuhl influenced music and tribute to the Magma legacy. Included was the track "J'ai vu naguere en rinture les harpyes ravissant le repas de phinee" by Shub-Niggurath. Apart from fuelling the Magma comparisons by simple association, this demonstrated to many that they were a real force in new music. Since Magma, by this time, had turned to their rather watered-down soul influenced style, Shub-Niggurath stood out and compared very favourably to their supposed mentor. Audion magazine proclaimed Shub-Niggurath's track "brilliant".

After this compilation was released, Franck Couland left the band to move into jazz and Frank Fromy also left. This left a rather gaping hole. Jean-Luc Herve was forced to take on the guitar left by Fromy not, as he said reflecting on this a few years later, because he was really a guitarist but mainly because the guitar was not an optional instrument for Shub-Niggurath. The heavy concentration on timbre and sonority required textural instruments, or instruments that could be used in a textural manner and Herve found the guitar to be perfect for this. He once remarked that it was used more as an electric sound source; more like a primitive synthesiser with an intuitive interface. In a telling phrase, an interview in 1990 had him saying he preferred "timbre to notes" and this largely explained his move from keyboards to guitar. It also provides a valuable insight in to Shub-Niggurath's approach to music.

1988 brought another compilation called "Dithrambe" which was more of a collaboration between Shub-Niggurath and Sleaze Art, a band composed of five bass players. The two tracks here were quite different; part two of the track on the Enneade compilation and another called "L'homme a l'habit gris"; a solo voice performance by Ann Stewart. Lacking a drummer and a guitarist -- Herve had to take over this lacuna -- the sound is quite minimal and pared down. The work on this album was later to be thought by the band as having its faults. The departure of two central members was a problem and they came to regard the solo vocal track and the interpretation of the longer ensemble track as untypical of their output. Another track "Delear Prius" on the Douze pour un 2 compilation in 1989 was followed by the live tape release on Auricle the same year with a considerably changed line-up:

Alain Ballaud: Electric Bass
Jean-Luc Herve: Electric Guitar
Veronique Verdier: Bass trombone, percussion
Sylvette Claudet: Voice
Michel Kervinio: Drums
Jean-Pierre Lourdeau: Voice

Notice also that there had been some significant shuffling of instrumentation implying considerable musical versatility in the musicians. Recorded on Friday 13th January, 1989 in Paris, this release demonstrated rather incredible ensemble playing and group intuition. Around this time, Jean-Luc Herve commented in interview that the "core" of the band consisted of himself, Verdier, Kervinio and Ballaud with others being drafted in for concerts and session work as necessary. Interviews from this time suggest that Kervinio was never permanently committed.

1991 came and, at last, their first CD release C'etaient de tres grands vents on Musea. The line-up was almost the same with the addition of another percussion player and Jean-Pierre leaving to take up a career as a painter; he contributed the painting for the CD cover.

Alain Ballaud: Electric Bass
Jean-Luc Herve: Guitar, Piano, Harmonium
Veronique Verdier: Bass trombone
Sylvette Claudet: Voice
Michel Kervinio: Drums
Edward Perraud: Drums

The CD marked a change to a more electroacoustic style with a spacious and subtle feel. The undercurrent of intensity remained. Since 1991, the band has recorded "many tapes" -- none released -- and performed as a four-piece consisting of Ballaud, Perraud, Herve and Verdier. Small tours around the Paris area playing to specialist audiences have fuelled their continuing enthusiasm. In 1995, a rather unpleasant event occurred; Alain Ballaud died of cancer. He was central to the band in many ways and very active in its musical direction; Veronique Verdier stated recently that many things have to change in order for Shub-Niggurath to continue. As a first step, they plan to release a CD of material composed between 1991 and 1995, hoping for a 1997 release. The style of this work is apparently based around improvisation and electroacoustic experiments, following on their last recorded work.

As far as ex-members of the band are concerned, Sylvette Claudet is now a jazz clarinettist, Jean-Pierre Lourdeau paints, Michel Kervinio remains a friend of the band and plays in small jazz bands. Frank Fromy produces some things with Musea and has played with T. Toeplitz of Sleaze Art. He has also gathered together a little society of French musicians and works with them. Of the remaining members, Edward Perraud (the youngest member of the band) remains interested in jazz and classical percussion, electroacoustic music and music theory. Jean-Luc Herve composes contemporary music for orchestra, soloists and chamber ensemble which is finding significant favour with recognised musicians. Apparently, he writes in the "spectral" style and has studied with Gerard Grisley. Veronique Verdier, after playing with some contemporary bands, has taken up an instrument called the "saqueboute", an quieter ancestor of the trombone. With this instrument she plays 17th century music (mainly Italian) in small bands, dabbling in Monteverdi and Mozart. This is not an instrument to feature in future Shub-Niggurath work as

"... in Shub-Niggurath, the power of sound is very important: electric guitars are playing very loud."



The Music of Shub-Niggurath
Improvisation is the basis of Shub-Nigguraths's music. Refined in practise and structured iteratively by the whole band, the approach to composition is liberal, pieces often being extended and altered when playing live. The essentials remain but the filigree changes. The aesthetic of the band has generally been one of force of expression over style; the former takes precedence and provides a careful consistency. The mode of presentation of their music has always been severe. I think it becomes progressively more severe as they have matured. To many, it appears dark, gothic and foreboding. Veronique Verdier has expressly stated that this ambience is not intentional: extreme expression is the real goal, take it how you will. Different audiences, the band reports, react in different ways to the music. They have favoured audiences not steeped in modern classical as a rule; naive audiences tend to have less biases. In essence, I agree that to treat it as dark and terrible music is to miss the point somewhat; there is much beauty in their work but not the sort with which we are used to being spoiled in Western culture. Obviously then, not easy listening either but as Verdier puts it, they would rather profoundly touch a small audience than superficially touch a large one ...

Many people compared the band to Magma, something which, along with other comparisons, the band came to grow rather tired of. This is understandable as Shub-Niggurath, particularly after the early stage of their career, have never been much like Magma. The general zeuhl ambience is apparent but little beyond that can possibly have them sitting comfortably with Magma-derived bands like Eskaton. Far darker, far more improvisation, noise and attention to sonority and timbre set them in quite a different sphere. Without doubt Shub-Niggurath thought very highly, and rightly so, of Magma but also of much other music which likewise failed to be an overpowering influence. As Veronique Verdier puts it, Magma are somewhat of "another generation" to Shub-Niggurath, thus, they feel, preventing a particularly close link; Shub-Niggurath's music has never been "directly made in the zeuhl style".

I put it to Herve and Verdier that much of their music seems to be a process of generating and then controlling noise in a manner conducive to a powerful resulting aesthetic.

"You have well understood our intentions: from the beginning and mainly today, we are intending to control the "noise"."
Following with a comment that this, if handled correctly, makes for music that can be called "beautiful" in a properly considered sense of the word, the reply came:

"We are not surprised you can say our music is beautiful. We don't want to make something ugly or dirty. Our music is EXTREME, we have invested ourselves totally in it ..."
This is an important aspect of Shub-Niggurath; that they are of such a skill as to be able to convince on this point which is anathema to a common unthinking aesthetic. Experience of beauty does not mean one cannot be terrified at the same time. Unsurprisingly, this is coupled with a well-developed sense of musical appreciation:

"... we can't say that the only "good" music is "new music" or "jazz" or "rock" or "classical" in every sort you find the bad, the indifferent and "the best" in the style."
It is unlikely that foreseeable new material will include vocals as Shub-Niggurath tend to "play with the people we meet" and they have not met any singers recently. Also, the loss of Ballaud also meant the loss of their main melodic creative force. Currently, they are interested in examining the role of timbre and electroacoustic mixes. However, they plan to do this solely with "live" instrumentation: no tapes.

Discography and Reviews
Self-titled cassette release

Les morts vont vites

Live

C'Etaient de tres grands vents


Miscellaneous Tracks
Track on Chant d'amour, K7 (Amen 6), 1986 -- "Yog-sothoth" (live)
Track on Enneade, Musea (FGBG 2005) LP, CD 1987 (included on Musea CD reissue of Les morts vont vite) -- "J'ai vu naguere en rinture les harpyes ravissant le repas de phinee"
Tracks on Dithrambe, Musea (FGBG 2015) LP, 1989 -- "J'ai vu naguere en rinture les harpyes ravissant le repas de phinee 2" and "L'homme a l'habit gris" (Ann Stewart solo voice)
Track on Douze pour un 2, AYYA (dt 1187) LP, 1989 (included on Musea CD reissue of Les morts vont vite)-- "Delear Prius"




Shub Niggurath - Les Morts Vont Vite
Release Date: 1986

Track Listing
1) Incipit tragaedia - 16:39
2) Cabine 67 - 6:16
3) Yog sothoth - 13:07
4) La ballade de Lenore - 9:30
5) Delear prius - 4:12
6) J'ai vu naguere en peinture les Harpies ravissant le repas de Phynee - 4:17

Member: Prog Owl

Musicians:
Alain Ballaud, bass;
Franck Coulaud, drums;
Franck W. Fromy, guitar;
Jean-Luc Herve, piano, organ, harmonium;
Ann Stewart, voice;
Veronique Verdier, trombone;
with Michel Kervinio, drums and percussion


The Ray Conniff Singers this ain't!!!

There is spooky sounding music, and then there is just FLAT OUT SCARY!! And this Owl opines that this is some of the scariest progressive music ever committed to tape or disc. Shub Niggurath mixes equal parts HP Lovecraft, Magma inspired Zeuhl, avant-garde classical, tortured metallic guitar, chilling soprano vocals, heavy throbbing fuzz-bass, manic drumming, spooky keyboards and ominous trombone. The end result is guaranteed to have radio programming consultants and Marillion fans alike screaming in terror!

The band takes its name from a particularly frightening monster in an HP Lovecraft story. Musically, this band sure does a great job of conveying Lovecraftian menace and atmosphere, to the point that if a movie were made of this particular story, this album would be the perfect soundtrack for it, especially cuts like "Incipit Tragedia" and "La ballade de Lenore", with its ultra spooky pipe organ introduction.

The musicianship is nothing less than topnotch, never lapsing into mindless pyrotechnics, preferring instead to create mood, dense, chilling spooky atmospheres and melodies.

This is most certainly not for everyone (I can see the horror in the faces of Marillion or Allan Parsons Project fans now), but if you want the harrowing spook house ride of your life, this little excursion by Shubb Niggurath awaits you.

You have been warned.