L eclipse Nue. — Negative

Dorei Recordings presents Negative, the fifth full-length album by L’eclipse Nue. Released in 2015, this pro-pressed CD was recorded while the artist was living in Japan. I’m fairly familiar with this project of Daniel Sine’s, who has released a couple splits with artists in my neck of the woods, namely: Tree and Lovebird. While in Japan, Sine collaborated (both live and recorded) with a number of heavy-hitters including: K2, Hiroshi Hasegewa, and T. Mikawa. Sine is now back in the states to continue their noisy activities.

As stated in the liner notes, the genesis of this album began with the title. In chicken before the egg fashion, artist Christian Weston Chandler created the cover art and then Sine crafted the sounds to illustrate the art’s story. The art piece itself, a naked woman with a strip of film beneath her reading “negative.” It is hand-drawn in an almost child-like scrawl, yet it elludes to a much darker message. As Chandler notes, the subject is a deceased women who had a life posing nude for art, and the artists and photographers who treated her very poorly. A cautionary tale about an adult actress? One can only speculate who this person was and how she was used, but L’eclipse provides the soundtrack to Chandler’s piece.

Through 11 tracks, Sine and collaborators deliver a powerful statement of crushing industrial noise. Massive walls of sound collide, with piercing sine waves, pummeling static, thick pulses, and laser like synth tones. Sine’s vocals shriek and slither, sounding eerily cold and distant. The added vocals by Aya, Tonchi, and Analchan adds an extra layer of eeriness, especially on tracks like “Revenge of a Dead Model.” Truth be told, I don’t listen to as much contemporary industrial music as I probably should, but judging from the strength of Negative I probably should. While I feel I lack the musical vocabulary to adequately covey how excellent this album is, take my word that it is pretty damn good.

Now that Sine is back in the states, I can only hope that L’eclipse plays out far and wide.