Warhaus is the artistic alter ego and solo recording project of Maarten Devoldere who (along with Jinte Deprez) fronts the urbanely soulful Belgian rock band Balthazar. Warhaus’ debut album We Fucked A Flame Into Being will be released on September 2nd. The second single, “I’m Not Him,” debuts today via Blackbook.
On “I’m Not Him,” Devoldere sows seeds of despair in an unstable world, smokily crooning through Biblically-inspired morality fables: “You want magic, count me in / You want Jesus, well I’m not him / You’re an angel or a whore / Tell me who you’re working for / Loving you isn’t easy you know / But it’s a motherfucker not to do so…”
The title of Warhaus’ new album, We Fucked A Flame Into Being (a direct quote from Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence), was “too good to pass on!” declares Devoldere. It is indeed a fitting title for an album where every song celebrates the inscrutability of encounters and pays tribute to the decadence and intensity that life can offer.
Although Maarten Devoldere has up until recently kept his Warhaus persona well under the radar, the glimpses offered up to this point (such as the debut track “The Good Lie”) have conjured up a darkly esoteric lyrical universe, fueled by desire and love, haunted by a hunger for the fleeting, yearning to express the unsayable; We Fucked A Flame Into Being probes such depths savagely.
“I love contradictions,” asserts Devoldere. “They are musically very appealing to me: raw vs. fundamentally passionate, brutal vs. romantic, art vs. Kitsch, archaic vs. modern”. The French sixties, a touch of exoticism, a careless apathy: Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg are never far away, as We Fucked A Flame Into Being cleverly coalesces fifty years of music history.
“I’m at the end of my twenties now. With this record I close an important period,” avers Devoldere. “It’s an ode to love, to its excesses and elusiveness. Though love songs are a form of advertising: you portray a woman and the listener should fall in love with her too.”
TRACKLISTING
01. I’m Not Him
02. The Good Lie
03. Against The Rich
04. Leave With Me
05. Beaches
06. Machinery
07. Memory
08. Wanda
09. Bruxelles
10. Time And Again
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