3 posts tagged “rentrer en soi”

RENTRER EN SOI put out their mini-album 'Megiddo' a little while ago, which is their last release before they disband in December.  TT_TT  It makes me so sad that they're disbanding...I was pretty shocked when I heard the announcement, since they didn't seem to be having any internal problems, and they've been around for 7 years now and gained a fairly decent amount of popularity during that time.  Supposedly their reason for disbanding is that they feel they've fully expressed their main theme of "returning to oneself", which I can understand looking at the volume of music they've made up till now.  RENTRER EN SOI has changed a lot over the years, but I've always thought they had talent and liked their sense of style and main theme.  Pehaps they feel like they've gone as far as they can with this band and its concept.  Maybe the members will go off and form new groups or projects...or they may disappear from the scene altogether, which would be a shame.

Although RENTRER EN SOI's past few releases didn't really impress me, and I kind of felt like there was a lack of freshness to their work lately, that's not to say the music was bad, and 'Megiddo' is definitely a step up, which makes their disbanding even more unfortunate.  'Megiddo' is more interesting and varied than their previous two singles, and doesn't include those two songs, which is nice, since you can tell they didn't just throw something together for their last release, but put real effort into it.  I can't say I consider the songs on 'Megiddo' to be among their absolute best, but there are several very good, solid songs on it.  'Metempsychosis'    'Damnation'

I think the majority of RENTRER EN SOI's greatest work can be found on their albums 'The Bottom of Chaos' and 'Rentrer en Soi', so be sure to check them out if you're unfamiliar with RES.  *sigh* It's always very sad to see a good band break up, and I'll certainly miss RENTRER EN SOI.  However, it was their decision and they deserve congratulations for having a good, long run.  I'll keep my hopes up that the members will turn up again somewhere in the industry. : )  Here's some of their best songs:  'Protoplasm'    'Thorny Rain Break'    'Binetsuka de Shajitsu Shita Shinso wa Atesaki Fumei no Tegami to Naru'

Rentrer en Soi's new single 'Unending Sanctuary' comes out this Wednesday, and the pv was just released the other day.  'Unending Sanctuary' is a nice song and a solid release, although I don't think it'll become one of my favourite RES songs.  I didn't particularly like the shouted lyrics in the beginning, although the inital screaming was ok...it just didn't flow well to my ears.  Overall I liked the second half of the song better, but I thought some of Satsuki's shouting/screaming was a bit disruptive to the melody and kinda awkward-sounding.  However, I do like the background melody a lot...it fits right in and sounds very characteristically "Rentrer en Soi" to me, plus it's pleasant to listen to and creates a nice contrast with the harsher parts of the song.

The pv is almost entirely devoid of colour as most of Rentrer en Soi's pvs have been lately, but it has some interesting effects and French/European-looking patterns and images overlaid on it.  There's a buch of text in there too, but I couldn't tell exactly what it said...probably something of a reflective or philosophical nature.  Anyway, I would of liked it if they showed a bit more of the rest of the band since Satsuki got most of the close-ups, but that's usually the way it is...and overall, it's a pretty cool pv. 
I have to say though, the cover for the single is kinda weird again...'Stigmata' had the Satsuki-Jesus thing going on, and this time it's Satsuki's (bodiless!) head floating around surrounded by flowers and angel wings?! o_0  He looks sort of like one of those stone statues from a church...I mean I get the concepts they're putting across with these covers [stigmata & Jesus, sanctuary & churches/angels/heaven, etc.], but I kinda prefer their earlier covers with the band or something else besides Satsuki's face on 'em. ^_^;

Today my anthropology class on Human Origins was offered a really cool chance to participate in the Genographic Project [which is run by National Geographic].  The purpose of it is to sample DNA from people all over the world to map how humans populated the planet, as well as determine if humans did originate in Africa from a small pool of ancestral individuals.  I really want to take part in it...all you have to do is let them take a swab sample from your cheek, and then once the tests are done you can actually go online and see the genetic markers in your own DNA and your individual deep ancestry.  Basically it would trace through the maternal line and show what path my ancestors took in migrating around the world and where they lived, which is really amazing.  Anyone can buy the kit and participate, but because of a sponsorship our class is able to do it for free. ^_^
This is the project website: Genographic Project

They said it was best if we could be in the Boston area in the fall semester though, to see the lecture given by the leader of the project about the results gathered from our campus...but I'm going to be in Japan studying abroad, so I hope I'm still allowed to participate.  They said they might stream the lecture online, so maybe I could still see it, but I hope there's no exclusion just because you won't be there for that.  I've seen the documentary made about this project and it's really cool...besides, I've always wanted to try this sort of genetic tracing thing since I'm curious to see what my results would be.

Also, yesterday Rentrer en Soi came out with a new single, called 'Stigmata'. I don't know what they were thinking when they came up with the cover, it's pretty different from any of their other cds, and with a title like that you'd think they'd come up with something more...dramatic...(why is it just Satsuki's face o_0?).  But the song itself is quite nice, a good continuation from the sound of their last album, which was sort of a mix of their new hard style and the melodic sound that characterized their earlier work. I think they've found a nice in-between here, in terms of sound and general style (it seems to be becoming a bit lighter looking at the cover and their appearance), but overall it's a nice shift since they made that drastic thematic change toward more dark, aggressive rock a few years ago (which led to rampant comparison to Dir en grey, of course -_-lll *sigh*).  Anyway, as always, Satsuki's voice is very nice, and this time the coupling songs are beautiful re-workings of previously released songs (I'm so glad they did 'Ushinawareta...', it was one of my favourite tracks from the last album!):

'Stigmata'