Artist: Papillon De Nuit
Title: Ariadne
Genre: Ambient / Gothic / Dark Folk / Spoken Word
Release Date: 24th March 2025
Label: Self Released
ingle Review
Here is another offering from the Yorkshire based project PAPILLON DE NUIT and fronted by vocalist / writer / instrumentalist Stephen Kennedy. Ably helped by a retinue of talented musicians and produced by Steve Whitfield (THE MISSION / THE CURE / SCENIUS). Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos of Crete. She helped Theseus escape the Minotaur. He abandoned her on the Island of Naxos where Dionysus was smitten by and later married her. She is associated with mazes and labyrinths. Like life, the Labyrinthine puzzle we all must traverse.
What we have here is a track of floaty gossamer lightness that asserts itself from a flurry of drums and percussion. I'm in a cloud of whimsy and reverie humming although I don’t know I’m humming. I feel wind blowing through my copious strands of greying hair atop a promontory of precise and clear cut verbiage. The bass hums like an ever present bee checking in on the inner cogitations. A cello asks plucked questions “How did I get here? My heart used to say. I have love, please, let me be!!” A sneery chuckle retorts with “Don’t go into the woods (?), you’re not a poem, you’re nothing” and then a throaty soaring and joyously cathartic end.
I can’t liken this to anything else because it doesn’t sound like anything else. It stands alone like me on my bike on Hampstead Heath feeling the breeze cooling my clammy wet skin whilst the elevated heft of my chest reminds that I am alive. Have you ever been in the thrall of doing, of being and enjoying it? But someone or something interrupts and you say: “I’m not done, this is good, I need a moment longer. Let me be!”
If only we had a bit more time!
Tracklist
01. Ariadne
Line-up
Music, words and arrangement - Stephen Kennedy
Special guest - Jared Hardwick of the Tengu Taiko Drummers (York)
Soprano / spoken word - Megan Richardson
Percussion - Rob Pearson
Cello - Michalina Rudawska
Bass guitar - Dominique
Additional spoken word - Stephen Kennedy
Grand Piano - Karen Amanda O’Brien and Stephen Kennedy
Recorded at Young Thugs Studios, York
Produced by Steve Whitfield
Mastered by Pete Maher
Website
https://papillondenuit.bandcamp.com/music
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8
Sound: 8
Total: 8 / 10
