Originally released in 1980, Ardeur catches Eskaton at a point where their Magma‑shadowed beginnings have evolved into a fiercely individual strain of Zeuhl: lighter in step, sharper in attack, no less apocalyptic in intent. Coming after the long‑form barrage of 4 Visions, this album trims the fat without diluting the intensity. The Parisian ensemble, slimmed down to a six‑piece line‑up, channels its energy into shorter tracks that hit with the force of an electrical discharge, each piece functioning like a focused eruption rather than an extended ritual. Issued in a small run at the time and long coveted by collectors, Ardeur has come to stand alongside its predecessor as one of the great artefacts of French progressive music.
From the opening title track onwards, the elements of Eskaton’s language are instantly recognisable but re‑wired. The bass and drums lock into a demonic, forward‑leaning pulse, while the keyboards form dense, shifting blocks of harmony that owe something to Magma’s celestial chord work but twist it into new shapes, drawing on contemporary French synth and jazz‑rock currents. Over this, the group’s two vocalists deliver eerie, tightly‑interlocked lines in French whose phrasing often feels closer to Kobaïan glossolalia than to chanson, spinning circles around the rhythm section and generating unusual harmonic tensions. Critics have described how voices turn into instruments and keyboards into voices, as rhythms overturn melodies and melodies fracture the expected downbeat; the result is a sound that is both cathartic and strangely weightless, like a mass lifted off the ground by sheer collective will.
Structurally, Ardeur swaps side‑long epics for a suite of more compact compositions, including new, sharper versions of “Attente” and “Eskaton” first heard on 4 Visions. This compression makes the music feel more direct and volatile. Tracks tumble from ethereal passages into harsh, angst‑ridden spikes; angular riffs are offset by moments of almost luminous calm, only to be dragged back into the furnace a few bars later. The band’s writing, mostly by Marc Rozenberg, plays games with expectation: themes appear, mutate and reappear in altered harmonic clothing, giving the record a subtle internal coherence beneath its surface turbulence. Throughout, the rhythm section keeps things firmly physical, grounding the more celestial tendencies in a muscular, almost rock‑like drive that hints at new wave and fusion without ever quite settling into either.
By the time of Ardeur, Eskaton had begun to move out from under Magma’s long shadow, edging toward the more synth‑forward experimentation that would surface fully on 1983’s Fiction. Yet this album remains the point where all their core traits - operatic vocal interplay, cosmic harmony, churning rhythm, a slightly cabaret/Dada sense of theatre - are held in the tightest, hottest focus. Often cited as “no less a classic” than 4 Visions, Ardeur functions both as an ideal entry point into the band’s universe and as a crucial chapter in the broader Zeuhl story, proof that this so‑called “celestial music” could burn just as brightly when packed into sudden, song‑length flares.
