Alcest returns to Romania next year for two gigs in Bucharest and Cluj. This tour will bring two guests Birds in Row and Kælan Mikla.
For principal songwriter and frontman Neige, ALCEST has always been a gateway to the otherworldly, a means of exploring his spirituality. An elemental two-piece, completed by long-serving drummer and creative confidante Winterhalter, their forthcoming sixth album »Spiritual Instinct« finds Neige at his most personal. “This time I had something urgent to put on the table,” he explains. “It is a very cathartic record – something needed to get out of me. It’s darker than usual, and heavier.”
Written in bursts both during and after a prolonged period of touring in support of 2016’s hugely successful »Kodama«, the sense of urgency Neige speaks of manifests in a record full of spontaneity, of immediate impact – be that in the breath-taking pace of ‘Les Jardin De Minuit’’s tempo changes, or ‘Sapphire’’s sun-kissed harmonies over an impermeable back beat, one thing »Spiritual Instinct« has is riffs, an acknowledgement and celebration of the black metal foundations that anchor their uplifting post-metal.
Birds in Row is a French hardcore punk band that formed in 2009 in Laval and is composed of three members, “T.”, “Q.” and “B.”. They signed to Deathwish Inc. in 2011 and released their debut album You, Me & the Violence in 2012. Birds in Row formed in Laval, Mayenne in 2009. Two of the members formed Birds in Row one week after their previous band split up, and recorded their first song one week later. The group chose the name because birds are able to fly around freely, however, “they very often decide to fly as a group or land on wires in a row. So, this for us represents how people could chose to be free, but always end up following their fellows to feel comfortable. They chose the name ‘Birds in Row’ over ‘Birds in a Row’ because it sounded better to the group. They also chose to sing in English because they, “wanted to be understood by most of the people.
Kælan Mikla is a three-piece punk/no-wave band from Reykjavík slowly getting darker and deeper with new waves and more instruments. The band consists of three girls who perform their own poetry and have been described as an avant-garde, fresh breeze into the Icelandic music scene in the past two years. The band was formed after winning first place in a poetry slam held by the city library in January 2013. They have since then played multiple festivals as well as just finishing a small europe tour. Kælan Mikla are known for their dark melancholic sound, most of the songs consisting only of heavy bass, drums and screams with some softer, melodic synth parts in-between. The bands lyrics focus on inner confusion and their intimidating stage performance, often including performance art of some sort, is bound to leave the crowd in a melancholic trance.
Tickets for the Bucharest event here
Tickets for the Cluj event here