Rendez Vous

In the organizer's words:

We left Rendez Vous in January 2020 after a tour with over 120 dates around the world and a sold-out show at La Cigale in Paris. We meet RDV again in May 2024 with "Downcast", their new album, and the first observation that comes to mind is that the cursor has shifted - towards the extremes. The high-impact post-punk anthems have given way to tracks of barely containable rage ("Sheer", "Dye and Retry"); at the same time, RDV slow down the tempo considerably on a large part of their new songs and create a new atmosphere that we haven't heard from them before.We discover a band equally capable of diving into the most unrelenting heaviness as they are of producing tracks of great melancholic beauty ("Nothing", "Smoke 'Em Heads"), and therein lies the strength of this album. RDV have gone against the route you might have expected them to take: 50% (very) angry tracks, 50% heartbreaking tracks - the mid-tempo tracks often flirt with ballads and heartbreaking screams. We didn't know RDV were capable of moving us to this extent ("The House Has Burned Down"), and this discovery is a happy one.The other big change in RDV's sound is a step forward into the reference decade: the group abandon their synthesized elements and release an album that has echoes of Frank Black, the Smashing Pumpkins, shoegaze and grunge - you could even scratch the surface to the Deftones. However, this shouldn't be seen as a hint of pastiche: "Downcast" is a pure product of its time, setting the course for years to come. Even though guitars have replaced synthesizers, the record is riddled with glitches and digital distortion, and the group surrounds itself with nightmarish imagery that aesthetically extends the emotional turmoil their music conveys. "Downcast" is an exercise in realizing the violence of the world in the mid-2020s, modern in its hybrid nature, like a fight to the death between man and machine - two hostile brothers trying to embrace but also suffocate each other.

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