April 6, 2021 on RateYourMusic.
Release: Vierge (Ascendant Vierge, 2020)
I've found myself depressed much of the past few weeks. What felt like a cataclysmic breakup after a short-lived but passionate relationship left me sobbing miserable in my (other) partner's arms for a week and a half, and the quieter kind of depressed, the watching-paint-dry kind, the turning-into-a-zombie kind, for the weeks after.
I found myself looping most of Danny L. Harle's discography, losing myself in the sweet and the bittersweet and the outright melancholy of love and sex in his tactile worlds, his amalgamations of pop and club music. "In My Dreams." "Blue Angel." Broken Flowers. Most of all, 1UL EP. Something about the losing-yourself of dance music tinged with that ache. God, that ache.
Ascendant Vierge's Vierge has something of the same feeling to it. Combining gothic sensibilities with trance and hardcore, it's a uniquely dark, ethereal, beautiful EP. Restrained by its moodiness but still indulgent. Giving you the room to both feel that pain and to let it breathe for just a little bit. To lose yourself in both the ache and a moment of relief. To just feel for a little while.