Walking blindfolded into the dark is not a casual pastime for your average person. Iphigenia Douleur of the gothic synth project Foie Gras is not like the rest of us though. She does not recoil from the shadows- She embarrasses them. Her 2019 EP Holy Hell is exemplary of the enmity of her firewalk into the strange world of shades.
Iphigenia releases her voice like a gasp, air escaping her lungs in equal parts shock and satisfaction, the heat of her breath visibly trailing behind her like steam from a locomotive. It is almost like you can see her words, dancing in the air against the detuned and inhospitable instrumentation- tones that sap warmth from the air like a black hole devouring starlight.
"Psychic Sobriety" is particularly threatening with its enticing, rhythmic wrap of a beat, percussion that slaps like a crop on leather, a motion that fills out the body of the song, creating the vision of a tragic figure that is slowly carved open by the glinting maneuvers of chilling synths that slice across its face and abdomen.
This disfiguration process continues on "God Lived As A Devil Dog," where Iphigenia adopts a confessional, reverent tone, while exposing the insatiableness of her lust over a prickly coil of interweaving worshipful synths and boiling guitars. From this point forward, the synth tones continue to have a swelling, gospel-like quality, lending a delightfully perverse flow to the seething shove of "Sisyphus," the alien evaporation chamber of "Red Moon," and the heavy-lidded, hushed soul of the prostrating "Latex Sun (for Úna)."
Holy Hell makes every step Iphigenia takes into the unknown as darkly succulent as a ripe peach that pulses in your hand as if containing the beat of a human heart.
