My next gig took me to the cradle of the Polish nation, Poznań, to see another all time favourite band of mine, Alcest. I first fell in love with them when I saw them as they were touring with Opeth in London in 2014 and they are one band I can start listening to the first album in their discography and keep on going until I reached their latest. Frontman Niege has talked about how “visions from another world” he had when he was a child (the band’s first album, Souvenirs d’un autre monde, means “memories from another world” in their native French), and his wish to describe these memories inspired him to create his music, mentioning in an interview of a desire to express a world that is “very beautiful, otherworldly, and ethereal” with music that is “very fragile, luminous, and ethereal”. This is frankly how listening to Alcest feels like: being transported into another world, another realm detached from this one, and they are a band that can uplift me no matter how down I may be feeling. This tour was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their second album, Écailles de Lune – albeit delayed due to Covid.
Supporting Alcest were Hungarian self-styled “dark doom folk” band The Devil’s Trade, whose downtempo, atmospheric, almost ambient tones were a nice prelude to the headliner:
But the starter was nothing compared to the main course. Alcest blew me away, opening with the title track of Écailles de Lune, providing a much appreciated uplifting of mood to contract with the slow, melancholic vibes of the act before. The atmosphere was electric and I was completely in the zone throughout the whole gig, half of which was from that aforementioned album whilst the latter half was classics from other albums, before closing with the closing track from Shelter, Délivrance, concluding what I felt was one of the best gigs I had ever been to. Fantastic from beginning to end, and I can’t wait for their next tour.
