Heusden Zolder

Description

Les Lignes Droites contrast the brutality of the concrete world with a poetic liberation of energies. The Parisian group Les Lignes Droites does not quite live up to its name. For its entire purpose is precisely to escape the straight lines of the Cartesian world, the fatal linearity of the arrow of time, in order to restore, if possible, the natural curved vision, the poetic and relative time of subjectivity, or even the circle of community. "Too many angles, we strangle ourselves," sang Diabologum in 1996 on their final album #3. Since 2014, Les Lignes Droites have taken up the electric torch of a revolt against the subjugation of humans to the positivist, rationalist, and orthonormative objectification of a reality that each day reveals to be increasingly absurd and senseless. Like Sisyphus in Camus, Les Lignes Droites recognize the absurdity of existence and embrace it, turning it into a passion, to sing about the absence of hope (not to be confused with despair), the constant reflection (not to be confused with resignation), and a perpetual conscious dissatisfaction (not to be confused with anxiety). Written collaboratively, the lyrics of their songs will evoke Michel Houellebecq here, Alain Bashung there, with music marrying the most brutal materiality (martial rhythms and Kraftwerkian synthesizers) to unbridled idealism (shamanic singing and unbridled guitars). As anchored in the concrete world as they are, yet constantly wanting to escape it, the live ceremonies of Les Lignes Droites sometimes evoke the electric sermons of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds or Swans, filled with raw energy, rumbling layers, and sonic explosions, where the inhabited singing alternates between despair, hope, anger, and desire. On records (Pour que la Nuit Passe in 2015, Les Humains in 2016), and particularly on this new EP, Heusden Zolder, they make the world of machines, factories, and cities scream, and make the words resonate, with the singer connecting intentions and intonations, adding new accents to create a new sensuality, a new physicality, reminiscent of Daniel Darc or Alan Vega. Heusden-Zolder is an old Belgian mining town, a space of projection, a fantasized and silent setting. Les Lignes Droites have taken it upon themselves to make this modern world of silence rustle, if not sing, in four love songs, which some may also hear as laments, prayers, or condemnations.