New Path

Album review

Some might argue that this album is darker than all their previous works, but it isn’t. Essaie Pas have always been insidiously morbid, their soul stuck between Christoph de Babalon’s and Ian Curtis’. While Demain est une autre nuit, the Montreal couple’s first long format in 2016, was recorded in offices that had been deserted by their employees, New Path is clearly influenced by Philip K. Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly, a schizophrenic dive into the drug culture of dystopian America. So not necessarily darker. Not more poetic, lyrical or techno either. But definitely more psychedelic. Like a bad come-down, this second album is loaded with an unbearable melancholia that leaves the listener completely paranoiac (watch out for the seven spiralling minutes of the track Les Agents des stups). If it weren’t as beautiful as a rainbow in an oil puddle, you would probably end up begging for someone to alleviate your suffering before the end of the six tracks. Exquisitely painful. © Sylvain Di Cristo / Qobuz