IRFAN – ‘The Eternal Return’ (2015)

09 November 2015
IRFAN – ‘The Eternal Return’ (2015)
  • Лейбъл: Prikosnovenie
  • Издаден: 2015
  • Aвтор: Никола Шахпазов
  • Оценка:

It's undeniably great that Dead Can Dance's best students are none other but Sofia-based act IRFAN. During the years we've listened to a horde of bands directly inspired by Perry and Gerrard's albums but none of them comes close to the exquisite concept, offered by these Bulgarians.

Their third album ‘The Eternal Return’ is a yet another evidence to that as well as IRFAN's next step towards the best ethereal acts not only here but in the whole world. 

We've waited this release with both impatience and a slight doscomfort. For 2007's ‘Seraphim’ was such a splendid listen that we wondered wether our boys (and a girl) would ever be able to record something as impressive once again. They took their sweet time but we're happy to state that, yes, they finally did it. 

Probably the greatest asset of ‘The Eternal Return’ is its consistency. This album never wonders aimlessly, never just plots along – it is smoothly constructed, balancing well between near-eastern exotic, Orthodox Christian mystique, Medieval European legends and a pinch of occult beauty. The sound is rich and multilayered, and very natural – just like on ‘Seraphim’, the band uses little (if any) keyboards and samples, relying on an impressively vast array of atraditional Balkand, Western European and Near Eastern isntruments including sanz, oud, bhodran, duduk and kaval.

The backbone of each track is the strong and quite varied rhythm section consisting of Kalin Yordanov and Peter Todorov, while multiinstrumentalists Ivaylo Petrov and Yasen Lazarov add layer after layer of texture and melody. The splendid Denitza Seraphim's voice is another defining moment for this album (as was for the last) – her presence is so strong we could hardly imagine those tracks performed by any other.
 
IRFAN's mastery goes beyond the strictly musical and instrumental. The lyrics and the themes involved display an enviable competence in Medieval history and culture (after all, Yordanov is a historian and Medievalist). Thus, ‘The Eternal Return’ truly feels like a journey through the First bulgarian Kingdom, the Crusader-occupied city of Damascus and a strange cave in the Sahara desert with depictions of people swimming in the waters of a lake that once was.

And even though we strongly recommend you listen to this album thoroughly from beginning til end, we should point out the extatically beautiful ‘Burana’ (in which the kaval winds melody after melody), ‘Tebe Poem’ (based on a Medieval Orthodox chant, beautifully performed by Seraphim) as well as the slow a sorrowful ‘In The Gardens of Armida’ (telling the story of the impossible love between a Saracen sorceress and a Templar knight). It is no coincidence that this review starts and ends with the mention of Dead Can Dance.

‘The Eternal Return’ contains a DCD track that IRFAN have often played at their concerts but has so far never been recorded in a studio. Petrov and Yordanov have created a version of the track and with the blessing of Brendan Perry himself (who also named the song), ‘Salamander’ finally made it to a physical release.

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