Album ReviewsReviews

Review: Rose Croix (2011)

artist: Rose Croix
release: Rose Croix
format: MC
year of release: 2011
label: Brave Mys­ter­ies
dur­a­tion: 30:17

Three anonym­ous musi­cians gathered for this pro­ject on Brave Mys­ter­ies, which dis­plays the vir­tues of that pecu­liar mix­ture of neo-clas­sical, eth­er­eal, and mar­tial indus­trial made fam­ous in the late eighties and nineties.

Main com­pon­ents of the music are synths and organs, per­cus­sion (mostly drums and bells), and the voice of the anonym­ous female singer, with an import­ant role put aside for dif­fer­ent kinds of effects and samples as well. The five com­pos­i­tions on the mini-album or EP all have a very strong theme of their own, and dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives. The opener is mostly built around vocals, organ, and drums, whereas the second track is a short instru­mental in which the excel­lent per­cus­sion takes cen­ter stage, even provid­ing many melodic ele­ments.

The third track is a shorter, vocal based one, in which clever use is made of orches­tral sample loop­ing. The fourth track is the longest, and fea­tures a more elec­tronic, driv­ing beat, remind­ing me a bit of some work by labelmates Burial Hex. A most excel­lent track, very trance­like and catchy. The final track is another short one, focus­ing on tim­pani, voice, and cym­bals.

As the label pro­mo­tion points out, there are cer­tainly ref­er­ence points to be found for Rose Croix in the past: Dead Can Dance, The Moon Lay Hid­den Beneath a Cloud, to echo two of them. I’d def­in­itely add Sixth Comm to that list as well. How­ever, I real­ise my sur­prise (and relief) that this style has­n’t been copied too often in recent years, at least to my know­ledge. There is a sig­ni­fic­ant risk of lean­ing to heav­ily on such illus­tri­ous fore­bears, but some­how Rose Croix avoids this. Instead, there is just the right bal­ance between cre­at­ing an own voice and incor­por­at­ing great styl­istic ideas from the past.

This ltd. 100 tape deserves to sell out quickly, as it should be of great interest to all the folks in the indus­trial corner with a bit of a nos­tal­gic feel for this blend of sounds. An excel­lent first effort, and hope­fully a pre­cursor to new work which com­bines the cur­rent sound with a bit more avant-garde.

[vimeo http://​vimeo​.com/​3​3​6​1​5​171]

Reviewed by O.S.


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