Curio from France – Aphar’s Cave (CIRCUM-DISC microcidi034) is mostly the vision of Léon Aphar, a singular guitarist and singer I never heard before, but he’s passionate and eccentric, both good things in anyone’s book. The album is enriched by the presence of Ivann Cruz, who’s a good egg and can throw down a good jolt of Jhove-power when he gets the electric guitar in his bunches of five.
As it happens Aphar’s Cave is all in the acoustic mode, but you won’t miss the electric axe since our two heroes (who both sing as well) throw themselves into the task with abandon and glee, sounding like two insane gypsies with their frantic, full-bodied strums and jerky time signatures. Even the very instruments might be unusual – assuming that “Barcelona’s Guitar” and “Kinshasa’s Guitar” in the credit roster means something…perhaps it’s just the names of the people they borrowed the guitars from. Léon Aphar was preoccupied with a particular album of Nick Cave during his youth, and this fanatical devotion seems to have kicked off his obsessive desire to realise this project, but he’s equally inflamed, we are told, about Schubert, traditional folk, gospel forms and the blues of Ma Rainey. To that list we’d probably have to add Peter Hammill or maybe even Jacques Brel – I mean anyone who’s evolved their own unique brand of speech-song which is more like a form of conversation (a very excitable and agitated conversation) than a conventional song.
No question but Léon Aphar is seized by the ghosts, demons, and odd characters that populate his teeming brain, and he virtually lives inside a haunted house. More syllables are spat out per second than you can handle, and what’s more they’re all in French too. Dark poetry abounds; I like it best when the duo subside into a form of musical moaning, the better to express the plaints of the ghosts. (11/04/2023)
Further reading:
Lignes de Fuite
Radium
Danses