Zadig – Silent Warrior
(KR3 Records, 2021-04-27)
Eat – Work – Sleep – Repeat.
Eat – Work – PAIN – Sleep – Repeat.
Eat – PAIN – Work – PAIN – Sleep – PAIN – Repeat.
PAIN – PAIN – PAIN – PAIN – PAIN – Repeat.
This is dark techno; feel the pattern, the rhythm, then break it, and wake up…
“Darkness” is this interminable torturing descent down the abyss. “Light” is when the page is turned, the calm out of chaos, the sun after the storm. Zadig’s new release is not light, obviously, but despite appearances, it’s also not totally dark.
From severe pain comes the fall, followed some days/months/years after by the intuitive decision: continuing the descent through self-destruction, self-defeating, or bouncing back, with the roar of the survivor. This is where Zadig’s release appears to lie, in between the two poles, hell and salvation, each with its great attraction. The zone is full of doubt and electric tension, but also contains signs of hope. It’s not totally dark, but it’s intense.
There is this moment when you fall apart and eventually, thanks to some friendly hands and/or a certain determination, there is this moment when you stand up, committed to living with the pain instead of dying from it. “Silent Warrior” exposes the process, not to the happy creatures, who will just sense in the release that “good old techno” Zadig accustoms us, but to the broken souls, familiar with the deep scars. For the latter comes a potential clear script: the heavy anxiogenic bassline of the first track represents the shock, the impact, with its alarming flanger. Then, the first version of “Silent Warrior”, with its industrial noises, brings the stressing mental battle, while the remix, relentless and intriguing, has an uncertain outcome. “Portal 8″‘s first version is one possible issue: grudge, anger. On the contrary, the second version, by MOD21, a lot deeper, suggests a long introspection and maybe a wise self-preservation. “Time 0” is the goal to reach, “the sun after the storm”, but producing it required another moniker for Zadig, as if he was yet unable to identify himself to this happy ending.
Or maybe all this is pure fantasy and the happy creatures are right. Zadig, atop his long experience, in the vein of Arnaud Le Texier, has one more time created dancefloor bangers, featuring Adriana Lopez, more immense than ever, and MOD21, who reaches in all his productions the summits of his Swiss mountains.
The answer lies in everyone’s heart, there is however one mystery left: who is the “Silent Warrior”?
Zadig a priori, deep inside his inner suffering, uses gear and music to express the roar. Or maybe his close friend, who has passed away without fuss (RIP) and to whom Zadig dedicates the release. Or all of us, men and women, who find into music the refugee of our hard times.
WRITING BY: CEDRIC FINKBEINER | 3 MAY 2021
