Jordan Guerette (mem. Falls of Rauros) Breaks Down Forêt Endormie's New Album, "Le désespoir utopique" (Album Stream)

I’m really glad to have the opportunity to share more about Forêt Endormie's new album, Le désespoir utopique. 

Conceptually, Le désespoir utopique came out of the idea of how some people relocate because they're privileged, and others because they are forced to; some can't move because of lack of privilege and others are able to stay put because of privilege (myself included in this last group). I was thinking about the Expulsion of the Acadians, the US evacuation of Afghanistan, folks seeking asylum in Maine (USA), Grapes of Wrath, and how a lot of my own family has left and some of us have stayed. The resulting lyrics are both intensely personal and attempt to examine universal human themes - grief, family, childhood - but they are not commentary about specific historical or current events.

Musically, my primary goal is always to evoke emotion from the listener. On this album, I worked to expand the group's stylistic boundaries with explorations of early European classical music (Renaissance and earlier), "continuous music" (Lubomyr Melnyk), and avant-garde jazz (Alice Coltrane), while incorporating more electronic/synthesized elements drawn from trip-hop and ambient. The resulting music on this album only hints at the aforementioned influences, blending them into our gloomy intersection of neoclassical and folk.

If you’d like to go down the rabbit hole, see the song-by-song breakdown and listen to the album in full below…

–Jordan Guerette

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Mon esprit ne cessera jamais

My Mind/Spirit Will Never Stop

One of the things that excites me about writing music is trying to strike the balance between exploring new musical territory and retaining the sonic identity of a project. This is a core pillar of my work with Forêt Endormie as well as when we are working on new music for Falls of Rauros.

To open Le désespoir utopique, I wanted to interpret what “ambient” means in the context of Forêt Endormie. The music that resulted has too much movement to be truly called “ambient”, but it comes close - a haze that gradually comes into focus.

At 2:31, the violin (doubled by organ), and double bass play a melody in canon that will reappear in various forms throughout the album and become a core theme (this time it’s in A minor, for those who like to keep track). This theme represents the nostalgia of “home”, of thinking back both to a place but also a moment in time that no longer exists. You can go back to the place, but whether or not it has changed, you have changed, and your older mind and body will not have the same experience. It is gone. This theme will henceforth be referred to as the Nostalgia Theme.

Near the end of the piece, a single line is sung: Mon corps ne bouge plus mais mon esprit ne cessera jamais [English: My body no longer moves but my mind/spirit will never stop]. I like the ambiguity of the French word “esprit”, so I gave both options in the English translation here. 

Even in death, we continue.

Tressé dans la terre

Braided Into the Ground

Several songs on the album are the product of my continued fascination with Renaissance-era European classical music. I heavily leaned on Josquin des Prez for the opening track of our last album, and while writing this album, it was the lute music of John Dowland that sang the loudest in my head. To clarify - this music is not an attempt to authentically write in Renaissance style, but rather to borrow elements from the music that I feel would be interesting to blend into our sound. 

One element that I used from Renaissance music is the Dorian mode. For the theory-curious: Dorian is a mode of the major scale that’s similar to the minor scale, but with a “raised” 6th scale degree. If Major is “happy” and Minor is “sad” (a bit reductive, but stay with me here), Dorian is a bit more emotionally ambiguous. Though it’s important to remember that all music theory and emotional responses to listening to music are subjective and culturally learned.

At the beginning of the piece, solo nylon-string guitar plays a variation of the Nostalgia Theme, this time in F# Dorian. This is the first use of nylon-string guitar in our catalogue, so I decided to feature it. We’re going somewhere new.  Another variation of the theme is then played by the violin almost immediately after, at 0:39, with the guitar switching to a steady accompaniment. The vocal melody that enters at 0:58 is again, another variation of the Nostalgia Theme. Choir-like vocals, church organ, tambourine, and large battery percussion are also new sounds for the group, mourning a time and place that, if we’re honest, we’re not even remembering accurately. The track builds to a web of clarinet, violin, double bass, and church organ, as each instrument develops musical motives, gradually increasing in intensity until solo organ takes over.

A song about stubbornly remaining in place.

La marée monte

The Tide is Rising

This track and “Tressé dans la terre” were written as companions, and in addition to their similar musical material, tackle similar subject matter - reluctance to leave a place, the realization that your memories are yours alone; no one else has lived the life that you have. But where “Tressé dans la terre” was about being anchored to a place, “La marée monte” is about preparing to hurry away - the anxiety and excitement of a new life - propelled by incessant triplets in the guitar and eventually, battery percussion.

This is another track that is heavily influenced by Renaissance music, as well as Leonard Cohen. We hear the Nostalgia Theme again several times throughout, still in F# Dorian, though its starting pitch evolves throughout the song. Near the beginning, the violin plays the theme starting on A5, and when the track builds to an intense section with percussion, we hear the theme in the violin rise to begin on D#5, as we struggle to keep our heads above water against the rapidly rising tide.

L’enfant se blâme

Children Blame Themselves

And now we flee. 

The piano flutters, strings pluck pizzicato gasps, the bass clarinet sounds the alarm. Danger is minutes away and only essential items can be gathered. Throughout the chaos of escape, there are moments of reflection, of decisiveness, of taking a deep breath.

I read something a few years ago that changed me. Children depend on caretakers, and cannot survive without them. When children have parents who are abusive, inconsistent, or neglectful, their brains cannot process that there is a flaw in their caretaker, because their caretaker is their survival; a flaw in their caretaker is an existential threat. The only way a child can process their caretaker’s behavior is that they, the child, are to blame. They carry these thoughts and feelings into adulthood. 

In my view, a first step toward healing is distance. Around 2:36, we slip into the haziness of an adrenaline-fueled flight; it doesn’t matter where we’re going, as long as it’s not here.

Une décision sera prise

A Decision will be Made

After the panic of “L’enfant se blâme”, we move into the more measured and calmly confident “Une décision sera prise”. 

“Une décision sera prise” is about confronting huge decisions that have essentially binary answers, where if we take one path, we cannot take the other path. It is easy to put these decisions off – I certainly have in my life – but this song is also about recognizing that inaction is still a decision, and it often will not lead to what we truly want. On top of this, our beliefs and anxieties don’t allow us to see all the possible choices, causing us to limit ourselves and stagnate, which can be represented by the Eight of Swords in Tarot mythology, which is used heavily as a metaphor in director Lena Mozzhelina’s music video for the song.

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The song also ponders those watershed moments we have in our lives when we realize that the systems we live in are largely uncaring, and that part of adulthood is learning how to protect yourself from being swallowed up by these systems.

This song is the most influenced by aspects of electronic music that we’ve done, specifically artists like CLANN, Bearcubs, and Portishead, though as always with us, it doesn’t really sound like any of those artists. You can hear these new influences most obviously in the sequenced drum beats and prominent synth pads, though violin, clarinet, double bass, piano, and electric guitar remain prominent. It is probably the easiest song in our catalogue to move your body to, and is maybe more accessible than some of our music. Then again, it’s pretty dissonant and probably weirder to many listeners’ ears than I realize. 

La chaleur était rare

Warmth was Rare

“La chaleur était rare” is a melancholy dirge; a rumination on cycles of abuse, on the thought of generation after generation of people treating each other badly because of their own pain. 

In hoping to break this cycle, it can be tempting to justify the abusive behavior of someone we care about with empathy, imagining the difficult things that person has lived through. Many of us have experienced that moment when we realize that though this person’s behavior is understandable given their circumstances, it is still intolerable, and we need to protect ourselves with distance. It can feel selfish and horrible.

I think that when we hear the term ‘abusive’, we can tend to think about romantic relationships, but if there’s an extra-musical “goal” to this song, it’s to encourage you to set boundaries with everyone – friends, employers, even close family. Sometimes, we even need to cut people out of our lives for good, or quit a job, or leave a group, or avoid a situation. There is incredible power in saying ‘no’.

This piece is the most “nautical” on this album, both in its lyrical imagery (Un labyrinthe submergé for example), and in how thick and wet the arrangement (instrumentation) feels. Our last album, Une voile déchirée (English: A Torn Sail) is largely built on this imagery, and at 3:56, the violin quotes a theme that shows up in a few pieces on our last record. It’s a fleeting moment, but if you’re a complete and utter nerd about this sort of thing (guilty!), you might find that interesting.

Aucun risque, aucune douleur, aucun lien

No risk, no pain, no connection

Looking backwards, we realize that the stories we learned as children are not the entire truth, and sometimes, complete lies. Every event is unbelievably complex and has its own story preceding it. This song takes us through a variation of a narrative that I’ve heard from many older folks - of feeling like everything has changed around you, like you “played by the rules”, only to be abandoned by the system and the people who used to surround you.

This was the first song I wrote for the album, and is also the farthest afield from what Forêt Endormie has released thus far. It is somewhat of a sprawling folk song augmented by some virtuosic, nodding to artists like Malicorne, Steeleye Span, Pentangle, and also to my favorite composer ever, Joanna Newsom. The Nostalgia Theme returns in B minor at 2:26, a call and response between vocal and violin, and again in a new variation at 4:31. 

Couvrez les fenêtres

Cover the Windows

This piece is led by the piano, first as a slow, monolithic entity, and later as the flurrying backbone of the ensemble. The imagery in the lyrics could be interpreted as post-apocalyptic, or perhaps it’s about a way of life that’s already been accepted and is common. 

The last lines of vocals on the album, j’ai travaillé pour obtenir l’armure nécessaire / pour sortir de la caverne / une courte distance (English: I worked to obtain the necessary armor / to leave the cave / a short distance), a loose and rather “shallow” reference to Plato, build to a release at 4:37. 

Our pianist Emmett Harrity is an excellent jazz pianist, and I felt like it was finally time to let him “do his thing” on one of our records. Our music is generally 100% composed prior to recording sessions, and it was exciting having him improvise and create the musical arc here. We have left the cave.

L’espoir d’un futur collectif

The hope of a collective future

The last piece on the record, the only without any singing, and perhaps the most obviously influenced by Renaissance music. This started off as my take on a galliard, a type of dance that was popular during the Renaissance era in Europe, and of which John Dowland wrote many, that has a specific rhythm:

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source: Wikipedia

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This dance is generally quite lively, which is what I thought I wanted for the “hopeful” ending of the album. But at some point, I strayed from actually writing a galliard, slowed everything down, and instead used this rhythm to get started and threw out the indicated accents as well. 

So we end the album with a melancholy hope that is more cynical than naive. But if we are truly hopeless, why do anything? 

Thanks to Jon for featuring us on Invisible Oranges again, and thank YOU for reading!

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Le désespoir utopique releases November 24th via Fiadh Productions.