From October 5 to 31, the Ex Tenebris Lux festival shines the spotlight on the best of what its initiators call “divergent cultures”. A dive into radical, even extreme music, which will end with a Halloween night at the Opéra-Comédie which promises to be daunting!
“The all-comers have been pirated by the kids. What are we doing, are we taking a chance on the weird?” But, yes, risk yourself on this unusual meeting organized by the association What The Fest, from October 5 to 31, in Montpellier. Even if the Tontons Flingueurs are right (always): “You have to admit, it’s brutal!”
Already, the name of the festival. Ex Tenebris Lux. There would be enough to scamper off like a Latin. But in truth, there is nothing gloomy, nor pompous, in this name-slogan, but a message to be taken at face value. “Out of darkness comes light”. At first glance, all this will seem both dark and dark to you, but once your gaze is adjusted, you will perceive shiny and even coruscant things!
“The will of our festival”, explains Muriel Palacio, its founder and programmer, “is to explore the vast fields of divergent music and cultures, and to offer intense sound and visual experiences”. Metal, noise, extreme rock, experimental music, alternative arts, horror cinema, performances… the festival rakes in the least ordinary, but broad corners. “It’s a freaky but arty event, adds Muriel Palacio. A niche of resistance in the middle of a world of the living dead!”
The long-awaited return of the intense Swedish singer Anne Von Hausswolff
The fact is that it is more or less the program at the opening, on October 5 at the Victoire 2 room: Oranssi Pazuzu is making a racket waking the dead, and giving them the willies! As long as you can bear the hoarse Uruk-hai singing of its singer Juho “Jun-His” Vanhanen, the Finnish group impresses with its impossible and yet convincing combination of black metal and psychedelic rock, brutality and sophistication, virulence and adventure. Warn your ears but bring them, they will take off!
Already invited in December 2021 for a memorable church organ concert of which Montpellier had had the exclusivity (her two other concerts in France had been canceled under the pressure of some really very ill-informed fundamentalist Catholics), the musician and (incredible ) Swedish vocalist Anna Von Hausswolff returns to the Jam on October 7 with, this time, her full band. Resolutely experimental but not hermetic, on the borders of pop art, ambient and gothic rock, his music is like a black hole: it attracts, absorbs, engulfs and after… And after, what?
A series of rare headliners, ranging from metal to psychedelic
We quickly pass on the cine-concert around the masterpiece of silent cinema Häxan, witchcraft through the ages by Benjamin Christensen (1922) which will be set to music by the duo Brame on October 8 at the Utopia cinema, as well than on the post-punk and art pop group from Switzerland, Peter Kernel expected on October 19 at the Antirouille, both recommended, to linger a little on the three following concerts, balèzes. Thus, the group from Avignon Alcest, scheduled for October 20 at Victoire 2, is undoubtedly one of the best metal formations in France which, at home, is crossbred with shoegaze and post-rock. In a completely different style, the Toulouse-based group Krav Boca rocks a headbutt-style hooded rap-punk that promises an unleashing of cathartic pogos on October 21 at the Rockstore.
Finally, expected on October 28 at the Maison des choirs, the Japanese group Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO (its full name… don’t look) does in the collection of tics: psychedelic, erratic, aesthetic, climatic, frenetic , ecstatic, fantastic… After this evening in the Japanese underground, the festival will slide little by little, not into the dark side of the force (that will already be done) but into the unspeakable, yes, like at Lovecraft . Until the fateful night of October 31: after two symphony concerts by the Montpellier orchestra special for Halloween (outside the festival), the Opéra-Comédie will host the apotheotic evening of Ex Tenebris Lux: “Dark Halloween”.
A Halloween night like we’ve never seen at the opera!
Since we are in the unspeakable, we shouldn’t tell you anything about it, but the temptation is far too diabolical: the Italian-style opera will host performances by Mother Dragon (who mixes pyrotechnics, acrobatics, dance and eroticism), Yôko Higashi (butôt dance), Necrophages (gore magic – keep the children away!) and Chloé Guillermin (tattoo artist and plastic artist), as well as voodoo or Gothic DJ-sets, monstrous parades (of the Sabbat family, of Youry the last rock star and Mike Tiger), as well as various creepy surprises, a bizarre bazaar and a vampire bar (insects, blood cocktails, magic potions…). Never seen !
We would like to thank the writer of this article for this amazing material
[VIDEO] Ex Tenebris Lux Festival: in October, the dark side arrives in force in Montpellier!
Find here our social media accounts as well as other related pageshttps://nimblespirit.com/related-pages/