You probably do not know Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret, right? Well, you probably do know Magpie Corsa and Dylan Desmond, if you’re reading this. But what is the connection between those two couples? Well, the eponymous record by Alliance Rose Croix is!
Well, maybe we first have to give a little historical background information before explaining the connection: Di Mambro and Jouret were the leaders of a New Age cult called the Order of the Solar Temple which gained a bit of a following in the 1980s and 1990s, up to the point when more than 440 people were associated with the cult, divided into the outer realm and the inner circle, with the latter being the group which was allowed to attend the fake rituals by Di Mambro. The cult was organized in many countries and operating on a global scale, in countries as far apart as Canada and Mauritius. The ideology was that death was nothing but an illusion and the members would be able to “move” their spirits from Earth to Sirius, a progression they called the “transit to Sirius”. In order for their spirits to proceed to that distant part of our galaxy they first had to get rid of their corporeal shells here on earth which then resulted in several mass murder / mass suicide events in the 90s.
Now here we can easily make the transit from historical background to musical interpretation: Desmond and Corsa wrote two songs for the debut record of Alliance Rose Croix; “Rose Croix” is the French equivalent of “Rosicrusians”, a spiritual movement originally started in the Middle Ages but still active until today – Di Mambro and Jouret saw their cult originating from Rosicrusianism.
“Awaiting Transit to Sirius” is one of the two longtracks written by our two musicians here – one you surely know from Bell Witch, Je Est un Autre, Pyrkagion or Stygian Bough, the other from e.g. Nonconnah, Lost Trail, Look to the North or Glowing Swords. They took the story of the cult and the mass suicides and created a 45 minute long album with two, well not tracks, but suites full of drones and noise but also wonderfully delicate sounds like a highly effective piano line in the last third of the aforementioned opener, where the piano is used to create a longing and yearning soundscape that surely is uniquely designed and here one must simply heap a lot on Magpie who also mixed the record and on Aidan Baker (of Nadja-fame) for mastering it. To make something with so many layers and intricate details sound so good really takes a lot of expertise in its own right. The audience might go so far as to call these last seven or eight minutes of the opener Americana, for the guitar line has a certain twang to it that one normally finds in the works of Wilco, Neil Young or others. The well-hidden vocal part here is unrecognizable in the sense of whether it is a part sung exactly for this record or whether it is a sample. Of course, there is a fair share of “wash” on these Drone / Shoegaze tracks, but when the guitar and piano end the first track one feels a bit of remorse that it’s already over. However, the second track ”White Star of Vercors” (a reference to a spot close to where one of the mass killings happened in the 90s) – goes the other way: We get a melancholic acoustic guitar line first which is then cut off with some really sharp Drone and Shoegaze parts. Here the pull of a plane rising and simply by creating a vacuum sucking us along comes to mind and it is really done to perfection. When the track then with seemingly one note only changes into a kind of Dark Ambient part to initiate the end of the record the transition (pun intended!) is still flawless although its abruptness might be as surprising as the end of the clean guitar at the beginning of this second suite. The record on some “star-like” sounds as if we were witnessing the rebirth on Sirius to start a new form of human life.
The combination rabbit-hole demanding background story plus the immaculate composition of the record including the switch between the tracks as well as the radiant interconnections between the different parts of the two suites – all of this makes for a listening experience one will likely not forget too fast. If at all – even though most of you will likely forget the names Di Mambro and Jouret again, but probably not the story of the Order of the Solar Temple and the record that it inspired!
