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  • Writer's pictureSylvain Lupari

BERTRAND LOREAU: Eternal Sorrows (2019)

Updated: Aug 4, 2020

“A symphony of vintage electronic music with a hint of psychedelism that will fill our memories of the 70's”

1 Cry on you 1:28

2 Flying Mind 8:20

3 Time of the Wind 3:00

4 Pologne 3:49

5 St-Brévin 7:45

6 Broken Tape 2:46

7 Brain Activity 3:48

8 Chemin d'Enfer (Part 2) 3:32

9 Chemin d'Enfer (Part 1) 11:32

10 And the Korg Was 4:10

11 Drunken Multiman 3:39

12 Eternal Sorrows (Part 1) 4:37

13 Flying Machine 10:29

14 Eternal Sorrows (Part 2) 2:34

Spheric Music SMCD 6307

(CD 71:47) (V.F.)

(Berlin School, Retro 70's)

There is something visceral that ties my emotions to the music of Bertrand Loreau! Very often, I have shivers and sighs in the soul while listening to the music of Bertrand. I guess we'd both cry while listening to old Berlin School and telling each other stories about our lives. Old Berlin School and slices of life! These are the threads of ETERNAL SORROWS. I had this unique chance to hear some of his old recordings and write chronicles over the years. I think of Reminiscences, Sequences and Journey Through the Past. Bertrand kept telling me that he had hours of recorded music on an old recorder and that the sound barrier was an obstacle. Nearly 40 years later, this friendly musician has confidence in our understanding and share to us a series of titles composed in the early 80's that it presents in a bold mosaic of 72 continual minutes with a tone that respects the era and a an almost virginal sensibility at the level of Bertrand's desire to act like his master; Klaus Schulze.

It's with electronic chirps and keyboard pads scented of Pink Floyd influences that Cry on You opens the electronic memories of ETERNAL SORROWS. The fine rain becomes denser in the opening of Flying Mind which proposes an ambient wave movement serving as bed to the beautiful melancholic dreams of the synth. This movement where two lines of rhythms rise and fall in a minimalist vision is recurrent on this album that breathes the beauties of the analog era. The synths whistle charming airs, here as in Drunken Multiman, while the rhythms slip into mists quilted as electrified. I'm thinking here of Time of the Wind sliding into the strange spectral songs of Poland. The organ layers and the pulsating rhythm flowing like a bass on the lookout bathe in a cosmic environment that is very Jean-Michel Jarre. With slow impulses of Farfisa's layers, St-Brévin is ideal to take the road of meditation, like in the time of Blackdance or Picture Music. After this ambient pass