Lana Del Rabies
Le Temps Viendra
self-released
An inscription in Anne Boleyn’s prayer book, and the figure of Boleyn herself, might sound like material suited for a meditative folk or neo-classical concept record rather than a blast of pure death industrial. But then again, Lana Del Rabies has never been a pro forma noise project. Building out from a pair of tracks released in the aftermath of 2023’s incredible Strega Beata, the Les Temps Viendra EP continues Sam An’s impressive exploration of gothic atmospheres and weighty themes of mortality which often reaches beyond the limits of familiar forms of noise.
Like the best LDR work, all five tracks here find equanimity between the sludging percussion and feedback which makes up the bulk of the instrumentation and Am’s vocals, with both halves of the equation expanding beyond the de facto extremity one might expect. “Anne Boleyn” begins things with a tremoring hesitancy, introducing the ambiguity of the queen consort as both innocent martyr and ambitious courtier. “Queen Of The Black Muses” swaddles a Swans-like machine beat in warm feedback and An’s circling vocals, praying to the deep for ascent. The wary but comparatively laidback “Incubus + Succubus” is as close as Am’s ever come to ’90s alt rock-cum-industrial territory, and acts as a breather before the slow sweep of “Tender Creatures”, which slowly builds from windswept drones to draw in churning dirges which sound as though they owe as much to the hurdy-gurdy as power electronics (not for the first time, the similarly historically minded noise of Menace Ruine seems one of the few accurate points of reference for LDR’s work). The titular closer finds Am seemingly occupying the roles of inquisitor and repentant confessor at once, with a shift from furnace blasts of noise to warm pads mirroring the resignation of one at peace with their own mortality, regardless of when the axe falls.
The phrase scrawled by Boleyn in her prayer book which gives Les Temps Viendra its name has fascinated historians, and certainly from a modern perspective can be read as either foreshadowing her sudden fall from favour and trumped-up trial and execution, or the larger historical judgment of her husband and killer, or both. That sort of morbid triple entendre is the sort of tesseract Lana Del Rabies thrives within, modulating between levels of resonance both sonic and emotional. Recommended.
