There’s something I’ve always appreciated about music with vocals/lyrics in other languages than English. For the native speakers or those who’ve learned the language, it gives a sense of “ownership”, of kinship, if you would. For those of us who have anything from no idea to a passing grasp of what’s being sung about, it forces the music to stand on its own. The vocals, for non-speakers, then take on an incorporeal quality – a glossolalia, if you would.

And that’s what I’m experiencing with ENDLESS FLOODS’ return trip, Rites Futurs. ‘L’Éclair’ cascades over the cliffs and into a hidden lake in the forest, a waterfall of layered guitars, spray-soaked rocks of rhythm at the bottom and lining the shore, all the while vocalist Louise Dehaye wafts above. A slightly darker turn is taken with ‘Décennie’, a sense of time passing slowly, almost imperceptibly, yet ever marching onward to an indeterminable end.

Choral chants take the lead from the start in ‘Muraille’, captivating and enfolding, wrapping the listener in layers of gauze; whether a dress or a shroud, is down to our perception. By the song’s midpoint, though, we’ve lapsed into a dream within our hollow bones, the bass of Stéphane Miollan elegant yet insistent, driving us forward in our oft’ turbulent beds until the morning comes…or does not.

Finale, ‘Rites Futurs’ takes up roughly ¼ of the album, but the band has chosen wisely in placing their most wide-ranging material at the end, for those who’ve taken the journey to get here. Dehaye’s voice returns, reminiscent in tone of Celia Humphris from ‘70s British folk-rock hybrid TREES, winding and entwining itself around near-ritualistic but subdued percussion and contemplative guitar excursions for the first half of the song. But it’s at 5:28 when ENDLESS FLOODS will transform instantly into an unexpected, glorious catharsis that reveals what this group is capable of when it comes to dynamics.

Like fellow countrymen ALCEST, ENDLESS FLOODS has never been a group to rush things along, and Rites Futurs is no exception. Fans of THIS MORTAL COIL’s otherworldliness, NEUROSIS’ unpredictability and the wanderlust of ALCEST over time, take note.
Review By: Lord Randall

ENDLESS FLOODS
Rites Futurs
Breathe Plastic Records