RHUN - TOZÏH

• rhùn: tozïh
      (2023, cd, france, baboon fish)

French experimental Zeuhl band Rhùn has just released "Tozïh", an album that presents 3 (!!) pieces, respectively over 20, 10 and 5 minutes long.

I like it a lot when a band explores all the possibilities of a composition, both melodically and rhythm-wise.

Zeuhl? Well yes.
Rock but also jazz.
Repetitive structures that create an hypnotic atmosphere.

With parts in the Kobaïan language (in which 'Zeuhl' means 'Celestial').

"Tozïh" is Rhùn's second release. Their first album, "Ïh" is from 2013, on the Altrock label. 

The liner notes display a very serious message:
Emëht Um Rhët Sam (the devil emits and shines)
This long sequence of crescendoing themes, together with the poem sung in French, are the very illustration of the subjects addressed by this piece. For Rhùn, the devil hides in the actions of man himself, guided by financial and selfish impulses that irradiate and contaminate the weakest (by which we mean the proletariat), and banish those who have no means of defending themselves: whether human (children, the disabled, the poor, outcasts), animals or nature.

The song offers two default options.
The first, as evoked in the poem, invites those most powerless in the face of this system to live somewhere else, imaginary or not, but which will de facto lead them to indifference or even worse... "Homeless and crippled, continue to fly above the corn. To the clouds my dear children for a time, for a time, may cling." It's a fleeting happiness, but a happiness all the same...
The second option is to let the world continue on the highway it has taken, i.e. this crescendo, towards a finale where the apocalypse vies with the grand gesture, where the virulence of the rhythm is dressed up in shimmering themes. A brutal, absurd end that the man himself calls "Sam!

Thus the devil emits and shines.
This track is a statement of fact; it offers no solutions.

Wow!
Amazing.

Check it out.