“The Last Great Torch Song” is the fourth extended play by Vision Éternel. I’ve always been equally proud and regretful about the release of this EP because it was a highly bastardized, chopped up and glued back together type of release, yet it featured some of the best material that I have ever composed. It came together from the struggle to compose enough new material to write a new album about Laura Dolgy, following our final breakup in August of 2011. What came of it was more of a compilation of unreleased songs spanning from 2009 to 2011 with lots of guests to round out the rough edges.
-Split with Ethereal Beauty (May 2008 – September 2009)
The true origin of where The Last Great Torch Song began is rooted in a split EP planned to be shared with the Californian post-rock band Ethereal Beauty. I first spoke with Ethereal Beauty’s sole band member, Jordan Leal, in early May of 2008, after searching on Google for “Vision Éternel” and discovering his band’s Myspace profile. Jordan had listed my band as one of Ethereal Beauty’s influences on Myspace, alongside three other bands: Parabstruse, Alcest and Amesoeurs. Ethereal Beauty was a relatively new project that Jordan had started in late April of 2008, and when I reached out to him a couple of weeks later, to thank him for mentioning my band as his influence, he only had a single song composed and recorded, “The Sun Shines Tomorrow”.
I was a big fan of the music he composed, and Jordan and I must have hit it off immediately because on May 15, 2008, he posted a comment on Vision Eternel’s Last.fm page inviting my band’s fans to check out his music and he also mentioned the split in preparation. In addition to Ethereal Beauty, Jordan had an atmospheric black metal project named Desolation, which was partly influenced by my atmospheric black metal band, Vision Lunar.
I did not realize until about fifteen years later how much Leal followed in my footsteps and aspired to do the things I had done with my bands. He even named Ethereal Beauty after Vision Éternel. At the time, I was promoting Vision Éternel as an ethereal band (this was two and a half years before I coined the term “melogaze”), that was the genre which I used and felt comfortable. And the first song that I wrote was “Love Within Beauty”. Hence “Ethereal Beauty”. It was right in front of me but I never made the connection.
We immediately began discussing the possibility of collaborating together on a split, though we had little idea of the direction we would take. On my part, I had recently released Vision Éternel’s second EP, “Un Automne En Solitude“, in March of 2008 and didn’t have any new material worthy of being released (though I did have b-sides). As for Jordan, he was still composing his second song, “There’s A Grey Cloud Above Us“.
Earlier that year, in February of 2008, I founded a new record label, Abridged Pause Recordings. The direction of the record label changed drastically over the course of 2008, starting out as an indie rock label in the winter, only to transform into a post-rock and post-metal imprint by the end of the summer. I officially announced the “initial four” bands to be signed to Abridged Pause Recordings in late August and early September of 2008; Dreams Of The Drowned, Black Autumn, Vision Éternel and Ethereal Beauty.
I officially announced the Vision Éternel/Ethereal Beauty split in November of 2008 through an Abridged Pause Recordings news article. It was my decision, as I was going to be the one releasing and promoting it, that our collaboration would be released on a limited edition 7″ vinyl some time in early 2009. By this time, Jordan had recorded a demo of Ethereal Beauty’s second song, “There’s A Grey Cloud Above Us“, but he was unwilling to use either this one, nor the first song on our split. He claimed that they were poor demos and that he preferred composing and recording better material if it was to be released officially. So as part of the promotion for Abridged Pause Recordings, I posted Ethereal Beauty’s two demos up for free download on the record label’s website.
In the meanwhile, I was approached by the Japanese record label Frozen Veins Records in September of 2008, to release a compilation of Vision Éternel material. Jordan and I had been discussing the split for eight months at this point (I put together the Japanese compilation in December of 2008) but he was nowhere close, and was making little effort to come up with anything new. He was not taking his band seriously. So I decided to use my material elsewhere. This compilation turned out to be “An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes“, released in February of 2009, and it included the first two Vision Éternel EPs; “Seul Dans L’obsession” and “Un Automne En Solitude“, along with three unreleased b-sides and demos. Those three b-sides and demos, “Love Within Beauty (Alternate Version)“, “Love Within Hope (Demo)” and “Season In Seclusion“, could have easily ended up on the split with Ethereal Beauty, had Jordan decided that his material was ready for it. Another song considered for the split this early on was “Song For Kristy“, which had been written and demoed in October of 2007 (it was later re-recorded and re-titled “Thoughts As Solicitation” for the third Vision Éternel EP “Abondance De Périls“).
In late 2008, I started working on a new release to put out on Abridged Pause Recordings, a various artists compilation entitled “Diluvian Temperals“. This compilation was to be the first release on my new record label because none of the “initial four” bands had material ready to release; Dreams of the Drowned was still composing a debut full-length, Black Autumn was already committed to releasing a new album, “Rivers Of Dead Leaves” on Antichristian Front Records (though I really wanted to release it myself) and it would be some time before he could compose and record his follow-up “Aurora – Morgen Rothe Im Auffgang“, and the Vision Éternel split with Ethereal Beauty was stalling. Black Autumn was contributing a brand new and exclusive song for “Diluvian Temperals” but Dreams of the Drowned wasn’t interested. I begged Jordan to let me use one of the two demos on there but he also didn’t want to. As for Vision Éternel, I didn’t want to include my own band on the compilation because I felt that it was biased, and I was also still self-conscious about my music, considering the exposure this first release was going to gather. I felt that my music wasn’t on par with some of the bands that I invited to participate.
Throughout 2009, nothing changed on Jordan’s side. He did not compose a single new song during the whole year and never made an effort to mention that a split was in the works (aside from that May 15, 2008 post when he was trying to recruit my band’s existing fans on Last.fm). On my end, however, I was heavily promoting this upcoming split. Every interview that I gave and every place that Vision Éternel was mentioned, I would plug this upcoming release. It was also mentioned in the official Vision Éternel biography that I was sharing online. I was giving Ethereal Beauty an equal amount of exposure, but he was not doing the same.
I came up with many ideas for the split that year. I decided that instead of forcing myself to record original material for the split, which I preferred to keep for EPs, I would re-record older songs, bring them up to date slightly, and ask some of my musician friends to contribute to them. This idea was mostly influenced by the short period in early 2008 when Adam Kennedy and Nidal Mourad were members of Vision Éternel and we re-worked a couple of songs that ended up sounding very different and much better.
I approached several musicians with this idea throughout 2009 and asked each of them to select which song they preferred collaborating on. These people included Eiman Nejad (who chose “Love Within Narcosis“), Adam Kennedy (who chose “Season In Absence“), Patrick Lacharité (who chose “Love Within Beauty“), Garry Brents (who chose “Love Within Isolation” and “Season In Neglection“), Camille Giradeau, Vincent Cassar, Jordan Leal, Josh McConnell and Philip Altobelli. Adam Kennedy was the only one to come through with something; he recorded a wonderful solo over a different song, “Season In Desperation“, though he used the original version found on “Un Automne En Solitude” because I wasn’t able to re-record a new version of it. Because of this, the song was never used anywhere and I always considered it more of a demo, hoping that we could both re-record our parts some day.
I liked this new idea of collaborations so much that I considered doing a series of split 7″ vinyls, all featuring more re-recorded songs with guest musicians. Aside from the well-advertised split with Ethereal Beauty, I also approached Tasharg, an experimental post-rock band from Seattle, Washington. I cannot recall where I first found out about this band, probably from a webzine that had promoted Vision Éternel. Tasharg’s leading lady, Natasha Spizelli, initially agreed to do a split in early 2009 when we talked on Myspace. But when I approached her again on Facebook in late 2010, she denied having ever talked to me before and claimed she had never agreed to do a split.
It is easier for me to admit this in hindsight; even though these series of splits were advertised, and fully intended to be released on vinyl, I likely would never have had the resources to make that happen. I had good ideas and a sound business plan in 2009, which hinted at several plans with bands that I wanted to work with through Abridged Pause Recordings, but after most of them fell through, I was left without a budget to make physical releases happen, and it was not until 2013 that I finally had the opportunity and the finances to put out something physical.
No matter what though, I knew that at least the split between Vision Éternel and Ethereal Beauty would happen some day and I pushed to make it come together. I reached out to Niels Geybels, a Belgian graphic designer who operated under his company Depraved Designs. Niels’ very first graphic design job was designing Vision Sufferance’s “Forthcoming Travels” EP in November of 2007. In February of 2008 he designed Human Infect’s band logo (my metalcore band) and in April of 2008 he directed a music video for Vision Éternel’s single “Season In Absence“. In September of 2008 I commissioned him to design promotional band images for Ethereal Beauty to use on the Abridged Pause Recordings website, and so it was natural for me to approach him for two upcoming releases for the record label. In May of 2009 I asked him to design something for “Diluvian Temperals” and also for the Vision Éternel split with Ethereal Beauty. Both of his designs were rejected however, as were the cassette layouts he made for Vision Éternel a month later.
A lot of the recordings planned for Vision Éternel were delayed for nearly a year because of problems that I had on my computer. From roughly May of 2008 to May of 2009, I was not able to record anything on my computer. I finally fixed this problem on May 18th or 22nd of 2009 (date debated: in an email with Frozen Veins Records I mentioned May 22nd as recording new material, but the recording dates credited for Abondance De Périls starts on May 18th) and that very night recorded a Vision Éternel demo, “Thoughts 3-03 (Demo)“, a song that would remain an unreleased b-side of “Abondance De Périls” and later took on the name “Thoughts As Resentment“. This demo marked the beginning of the recording sessions for “Abondance De Périls“, which soon took priority because of Jordan’s carelessness with our release.
2009 April 16th, Last.fm
Ethereal Beauty – Corrosion
June 2009 Ethereal Beauty joins Pest Productions roster for compilation.
In June of 2009, while looking for record labels to release Soufferance’s debut full-length, “Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The Mind” (which I was finally able to complete after fixing my computer), I came in contact with Robert Forgacs, owner of the Romanian record label Valse Sinistre Productions. Robert was mostly interested in working with Vision Éternel and wanted to release the upcoming EP that I was working on (“Abondance De Périls“) and also the split with Ethereal Beauty, both on CD. Robert loved Vision Éternel so much that he was willing to release anything that I would have put together for him. But I turned Robert down because I wanted to, and always preferred, releasing Vision Éternel material on my own record labels, where I could control every aspect of things. I was also planning to make the split happen on vinyl through Abridged Pause Recordings and Robert didn’t have the budget to do that on Valse Sinistre Productions. Robert and I did however discuss the possibility for Valse Sinistre Productions to re-issue both the Ethereal Beauty and Tasharg splits on CD once the vinyls were sold out. And so in the meanwhile, I was able to convince Robert to release the Soufferance album instead.
In August of 2009, “Diluvian Temperals” was finally released and was a huge success. Abridged Pause Recordings was already a respected record label in the community and I made sure to continue to advertise the upcoming split in the works. Even with all the interest that I was receiving, Jordan then did something that really angered me. In September of 2009, I found out by complete surprise that the Chinese record label Pest Productions had gotten permission to use Ethereal Beauty’s two demo songs on the CD compilation “The World Comes To An End In The End Of A Journey“. These were the same recordings that Jordan had refused to let me use on “Diluvian Temperals” and hadn’t wanted to use on the split with Vision Éternel, claiming that he didn’t want them officially released. Yet he agreed to let this other record label release them, less than a month after “Diluvian Temperals” was out. Not only that, but he never even told me that this release was coming out, because as a fan I would have loved to know, and also because Ethereal Beauty was signed to Abridged Pause Recordings, we could have worked out some promotion for it. It made no sense to me and I resented him deeply for it. It pissed me off so much that I planned to never talk to him again.
-Split with Bonfires For Nobody (January 2010 – October 2010)
On January 17th of 2010, I initiated a new conversation with Jordan by sending him an un-mastered version of Vision Éternel’s new EP, “Abondance De Périls” (then titled “L’espoir D’Une Vie“), as a sort of peace offering. He had not made any attempt to talk to me since the previous summer and this got us talking again. I thought that now that I had this new EP finished, we could focus on our split once again. He told me that he was still interested in doing a split together but that he hadn’t written any new Ethereal Beauty-like material. He was then composing more ambient material, which he planned to release under a different name because it was so different from the two Ethereal Beauty demos from 2008. At that time, he had three songs composed for the “new” project, which eventually took on the name Bonfires For Nobody. I offered to guest on some of the new recordings, and also asked him to record some material over some of the b-sides that I had from “Abondance De Périls“, but he stopped responding to me.
On February 14th I posted a re-recording of “Love Within Narcosis” (one of the b-sides from “Abondance De Périls“) up on Myspace as a Valentines Day exclusive and in promotion of the upcoming EP, which was delayed from the original release date because of Adam Kennedy’s schedule (he was mastering it). That was the first time that I shared one of the recordings intended for the split publicly. “Abondance De Périls” was released on Abridged Pause Recordings on March 9th of 2010. The next day, on March 10th, Jordan publicly announced the name of his new band, Bonfires For Nobody and that a full-length would be released within the year.
Last.fm Scrobbles
2010 March 31st
Vision Éternel — Rehearsal November 30th, 2009
Vision Éternel — Eternel 4 Part 1
Vision Éternel — Eternel 4 Part 2
Recordings
March 18th Sometimes In Interlude Part One (Demo) aka Eternel 4 Part 1
March 18th Sometimes In Interlude Part Two (Demo) aka Eternel 4 Part 2
Re-recording of more songs (this was dedicated to Leonie) Night of May 6-7, 2010
May 6th Isolation
May 7th Neglection
May 7th Absence
In my diary entries, I am extremely depressed and back in love with Leonie, who had come over to my apartment and we made love around May 1, 2010. I spent the next several weeks writing only about her and about how I felt I was a failure in life. I wanted to record a new VE album and dedicate it to Leonie (it was long-overdue). On May 7th, I invited Leonie over to come listen to my new recordings but declined. The next night she asked me to go out with her for dinner but I declined. One time we met up at a bar too. I felt that she used me to get laid when she was drunk, and I just kept falling back in love with her. I also wanted to dedicate the Ephemere and Lanterns Awake material to her.
Isolation sounded far too similar to the original version, with the only difference being that I started with the “Love Within Extended” part, then lead into Isolation.
Absence sounded very different and I can’t recall why I didn’t finish recording or elaborated on this version further.
May 7, 2010, 1:35 AM. Posted on Facebook: “just finished re-recording 3 Vision Éternel songs. this is for a special new “full length” album ive got in the works. more on this soon, but its a secret ”
[the special full-length was going to be VE songs re-recorded with guest musicians]
On May 7th I sent Garry Brents the re-recorded version of “Season In Neglection” (“Neglection Thoughts Of Sonya” possibly recorded that day?) hoping that he could record his parts to use on the upcoming split with Bonfires For Nobody. But he was busy with other things and he never got around to it. On my part, I was busy promoting “Abondance De Périls” and Adam Kennedy’s band Beyond the Dune Sea, which had released an album at the same time on Abridged Pause Recordings. I spent most of the spring promoting those two releases.
I was emailing people to do the split with because Jordan wasn’t giving me any news, and he kept stalling and telling me nothing was recorded and he didn’t have anything to release.
July 26th 2010: me to Anna Rose Carter: Hey anna. i know you have a couple releases on your hands but i was offered to release a split on Asiluum Arts records for my band Vision Etgernel, and i really want it to be with you. would you like to share a few songs with me on this potentially great release?
>this was my backup plan in case Jordan flaked out again
Her reply July 29th: Hey Alex, this sounds great but im really sorry, i just dont think i’ll have time at the moment, im working really hard on two releases i have coming up and i want them to be to the best of my potential. If I didnt have these releases I would for sure! Sorry Alex! I hope you’re well and thankyou so so much for asking me, im so gratefu
August 8th 2010: message Jordan with this: yo. what music are you doing lately? i was offered to have a split released on Asiluum with VE material. are you still interested? do you have any EB demos laying around?
August 9th: him: Hey man, I’ve been working on my album for BFN and some of the tracks I’m using are ambient pieces that I made during EB but maybe we could use those for this instead since they don’t fit too well with the BFN songs with drums. Ill send you the tracks soon so you can hear them.
>then he sends me the download of the 7 songs zip file from July
July16th puts together quick download of 7 songs for friends
Me: hey dude i just saw on the BFN myspace that you plan to self-release the full length digitally. i’m super interested in having it on Abridged Pause! as you mentioned, if there is a demand for it, we can work something out for physical copies… As far as the split goes, if you really want to take those songs out of the album, it could be a great split. Would you use these tracks under BFN or ET?
August 10th: HIM: I’m still confused as to whether I would want to take them out and use it for EB. I feel like EB was another concept and all the tracks on here have that improvised feel or are improvised so using it under the name of EB would throw some people off I guess haha. I’m planning on recording more material that I’ve been writing these past days to add to the album so maybe I won’t use some of the ambient tracks and possibly use them for this split your doing.
ME: ya i think thats a good idea. once the album is completely done, whatever you dont use, we can use on the split. at the same time 2 releases on diff labels (if youd like to work with APR for teh full length) will get you more immediate exposure… also if you havent checked out the label that wants to release the split, check it out http://asiluum.com
August 12th 2010 Costin Chioreanu and Marius Costache are intersted in releasing the split with Bonfires For Nobody on Asiluum Arts. Costin would have provided the artwork for free.
August 15th 2010 post on APR Twitter “now working on the following full length and a very special split!”
August 19th silence is also a sound, post rock community posted all 5 VE releases
August 21st: around when do you hope to have the album finished by? ive got a potential other band that has a full length ready for release, and id like to continue the habbit of releasing 2 albums at the same time on APR
Jordan Leal: I think I’ll have the album done by October. I need to get settled in with my new classes for school next week and I should be able to do some recording. I’ll keep you posted on its progress.
so as of August 2010, the split was going to have the two re-recorded songs plus 3 BFN songs.
August 23rd 2010 post on APR Twitter “Silence is also a Sound just posted every single Vision Éternel album and Beyond the Dune Sea! this is probably… http://fb.me/HDGozJ4e”
August 25th 2010 post on APR Twitter “news, news, news! read the blog on out myspace page! http://www.myspace.com/triskalyon/blog?bID=538571052”
[at least one of those news was the Dedicated Records compilation. another news probably was Silence Is Also A Sound posts. Possibly another news could be the split?]
August 31, 2010, 11:54 PM posted on Facebook “autumn and the departure of many things… inspirations are soon to surface again.” [this was a reference to Harmonium’s song “Depuis l’automne…”
September 1, 2010, 1:03 PM posted on Facebook “new Vision Eternel songs”
September 15 or 18 did the first interview for WTF Metal Music in person.
September 17, 2010: come up with “Melogaze” term and promote that a little bit.
September 21st mention split with Bonfires For Nobody in video interview
September 24th William Paulhus and Jeremy last name missing, friends with Jeremy Roux in Montreal, approach me to write news. Roux had told them about Abridged Pause Recordings. https://www.last.fm/user/William_Paulhus
[september 24th, 2010, Paulhus leaves a comment on Vision Eternel’s Last.fm page praising the music and offering to publish posts “Excellent matériel, si jamais vous avez des news à faire diffuser. Passez par le www.pelecanus.net / Great stuff, if you want to share some news with the post-rock community, just ask www.pelecanus.net”]
In the meanwhile, I had been working on the fourth VE EP on the side. The first new song recorded was the “extended” portion, which was recorded on September 24th, 2010 (the same night as the additional ebow section for “Neglection” and same night that I edited the Interview video).
Extended was the first song recorded and planned as part of the 4th EP because the two demos from March didn’t sound good to me at the time.
September 29th started talking to Shane Hill about The Inarguable interview
Last.fm Scrobbles for 2010
2010 October 3rd
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Start from the Beginning: The Accident
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
2010 October 14th
Vision Éternel — Narcosis (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
2010 October 25th
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — Narcosis (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — Solitude ’09
Vision Éternel — Thoughts as Consolation (Demo 1)
Vision Éternel — Thoughts as Consolation (Demo 2)
Vision Éternel — Thoughts Extended (Demo)
Vision Éternel — Start from the Beginning: The Accident
Vision Éternel — Rehearsal November 30th, 2009
Vision Éternel — Eternel 4 Part 1
Vision Éternel — Eternel 4 Part 2
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
2010 October 27th
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 2-3
Vision Éternel — Love Within Narcosis (Take 1)
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Thoughts as Solicitation (Demo)
Vision Éternel — Solitude ’09
2010 October 28th
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
2010 October 29th
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Season In Seclusion
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — Solitude ’09
Vision Éternel — Thoughts as Consolation (Demo 1)
2010 October 30th
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
2010 November 1st
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 2-3
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
Vision Éternel — Solitude ’09
Vision Éternel — Narcosis (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
2010 November 2nd
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 2-3
2010 November 15th
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 3
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
2010 November 18th
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 2-3
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 3
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
2010 December 11th
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — Solitude ’09
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — Neglection (Thoughts of Sonya Session)
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Neglection (new title came up with around 1:30 am)
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Neglection
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 2-3
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 3
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Neglection
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 1
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 2-3
Vision Éternel — VE4 In-Between 3
Vision Éternel — VE42 Rani
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Neglection
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Narcosis
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Neglection
Vision Éternel — VE4 Extended
Vision Éternel — Sometimes in Narcosis
Continue for 2011:
https://www.last.fm/user/HDS7/library?from=2011-01-01&to=2011-01-31
October 10th did the second interview for WTF Metal Music via MSN Messenger.
October 13th songs used on The Inarguable because Jordan told me he didn’t want to separate the songs from the album. kept saying he “wasn’t sure” Was also in discussion for an interview and news post on Pelecanus.
October 13th publish Narcosis remaster on YT
October 14th publish Interview on YT
Night of October 13th/14th The Inarguable sent me the Vision Eternel interview on the night of October 13th/14th; I answered it right away over-night, and it was published later that same day, the 14th. so i answered the questions, went to jam with Guillaume, then later that night the interview was published. That means that by this time, Paulhus had already blackballed me; since he was friends with Guillaume, maybe it had something to do with it.
October 14th The second time I jammed with Guillaume Fleurent for Lanterns Awake. I went back to his place to jam the songs again. I was really disappointed to find out that he had not learned the songs and had trouble keeping up with me during jamming. It wasn’t that he was a bad guitar player, but for some reason he was unable to comprehend the slow-galloping picking that I was playing. So we amicably agreed that it wasn’t going to work out. On his side, Alex didn’t have time to jam for our band anymore.
October 15th The Siren’s Sound (which had previously published a review of An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes on September 3rd 2009 [and probably something else about Abondance De Périls in March/April 2010], published a Vision Eternel discography page on their website, along with one of the only reviews the guy ever wrote, for Soufferance’s Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the Mind and the still-unreleased and unfinished Dementia Preacox. He also shares for free download Dementia Preacox which angers be beyond belief and I ask him to take it down immediately. In retaliation, he also removes all Vision Eternel posts from his website.
October 16th Jordan releases 7-song album on Bandcamp for free download and doesn’t even tell me.
A month later, Jordan self-released Bonfires for Nobody’s full length album by himself on bandcamp, which included ten songs total (the seven recorded for the album plus all three songs meant for our split). Not only that, we had a verbal agreement that Abridged Pause Recordings was going release the album, seeing as Ethereal Beauty was signed to the label since 2008! He didn’t even tell me that the album was out, I discovered it two days later by accident. Well that did it for me, and we never spoke again.
But I did find out through the post: https://www.facebook.com/notes/jordan-leal/bonfires-for-nobody-debut-digital-album-release/444494776937
October 18th “Vision Éternel Split With Bonfires For Nobody No Longer Happening” – Correction: the split with Bonfires For Nobody is no longer happening. We know no one gives a shit, but we just want to limit more people being disappointed, as we already are. And yes, we realize that this simple update alone is giving them more attention than they deserve.
October 24th: The second song for the 4th EP was recorded on October 24th of 2010, and was this time based on a girl that I had a huge crush on almost a year earlier named Rani-Grabrielle Dubé Paré. I was looking at her pictures one night, after Laura had yet again broken up with me, and felt extremely depressed, so I recorded that song. For me, it was enough to write an album about her. I wanted to make this EP a little different from the past ones by having short interludes in between each songs. The album would have been titled like this:
- Moments of Remorse
- Moments of Anticipation (this was the Rani song *)
- Moments of N (possibly Neglection or Narcosis if I had been strapped for a missing song, but the plan was definitely to have a new song)
- Moments of I / + Moments of Extended (later became Anticipating Moments)
*Moments of Anticipation was the title I gave to the Rani song on October 24, because at the time, the eBow piece was going to be the extended portion. The Rani song/Anticipation was retitled Underlying Sadness, and the extended portion took on the title Anticipating Moments.
November 1st: I confront Jordan
-Vision Éternel in the public eye (August 2010 – October 2010)
more info on the September/October incidents that made me withdraw from the “public”
Pelicanus issues with
October 16th “Vision Éternel Withdrawing From The Public” – I’m sick and tired of being fucked over by blogs and zines. From now on, there will be no more interviews, no more reviews approved, no more submissions of material.You can all go fuck yourselves. Except for The Innarguable, which has….
getting fucked over by Pelecanus and The Siren’s Sound.
I was getting a lot of coverage at that time because Vision Eternel was finally gaining traction from Abondance De Perils, I was getting written about in The Inarguable (2 articles), The Sirens’ Sound (3 articles that year), Pelecanus was asking.
Vision Lunar in WTF Metal Music (3 articles in 3 months) – release og Phase One
Soufferance was also getting covering around that time bcause Travels had finally made its way to magazines/webzines, https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/56f58f09-f937-4734-abef-b6cddc3af563
Abridged Pause was also starting to get some fans.
lots of things going on at that time: first band photo shoot, first video interview, other interview interest coming in every week -was doing 1 interview weekly for a month, new song on Great Messengers, remastering of Narcosis video, initially also promoting upcoming split with Bonfires For Nobody, but after, fallout with Jordan meaning split was no longer happening so I had these two unreleased songs up for grabs. I was beginning work on the fourth EP. I was promoting the new term Melogaze. I was riding the wave at the height of post-rock’s popularity, though Vision Éternel was not entirely a post-rock band, it did feature some elements of it, and because of that, I promoted the last EP, Abondance De Périls heavily as a post-rock release. Many blogs and webzines were posting about VE and videos were popping up on YouTube. All of the promotion that I had done for the third EP in the spring and summer of 2010 was paying off and I was getting a whole lot of new followers and fans, the first time that I felt back on top since 2007.
At first I submitted the songs for free download on The Inarguable blogzine with an interview they had on VE, because I didn’t plan to use these songs anymore. I had re-recorded “Narcosis” and “Neglection” during the “Abondance de périls” session, in Drop C tuning. Right before sending the songs to The Inarguable, I added an entire ebow section to “Neglection” and it became what I feel is one of the best things I have ever done.
For “Narcosis” however, I didn’t add anything else. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted Adam Kennedy or Darklink to record a solo for it, but neither ever came up with anything, though they had previously compose solos over other songs. So I went back to the old list of collaborating musician ideas I had and asked Garry Brents to add some stuff to it. He came back about a week later with some great keyboard leads over it. Now I wanted a guitar solo over it and the best person I knew was Eiman Nejad. I was hoping to get him to do something, but he simply didn’t have time, but promised to get to it later on, so that put off the release for a while.
-Split with Marc Doudin (October 2010 – January 2011)
I figured my best way to say fuck you to Jordan was to release this split with someone else.
I asked Marc Doudin, who was an alleged fan of VE for some time (having posted every album on his blogzine). He sent me various songs he was writing through out December 2010 and January 2011. But everything that he sent me was really, really bad. It was making me cringe trying to listen to it. I didn’t want any association with him or his music anymore. I felt that doing a split with him was beneath me and would actually make Vision Eternel look bad. So I kept asking other people, hoping to make the split happen.
Marc Doudin had a webzine called The Glassforest Blogspot
I first emailed him on May 21st 2009 for him to review An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes.
We talked via email over the next month but it was actually his blog-partner Filipe who wrote and posted the review on June 1st 2009.
He must have been a bigVision Eternel fan, because his webzine had a link to Vision Eternel’s Last.fm page in “Bands we support”.
Fast forward to a whole year later… I probably started looking around for someone else to do the split with in mid-October 2010 as soon as Jordan fucked me over. By the end of the month I had no luck and settled with Marc Doudin, and we decided to do it on October 31st 2010.
November 1st 2010: la 2ieme chose est que depuis yier, une nouvelle de Vision Éternel est arriver. “Je travail aussi sur un split avec Marc Doudin, qui devrait sortir d’ici le printemps 2011” juste pour vous expliquer a vous, ceci nest pas necessaire detre dit dans lentrevue, le split etait supposer etre avec Ethereal Beauty (qui a changer de nom a Bonfires for Nobdoy) depuis 2008… le mec du groupe ma completement fourrer sur la sortie et sur son album qui etait supposer sortir sur Abridged Pause… donc jai decidé que la meilleure facon de lui dire fuck you cetait de faire le split avec quelqun dautre..
Explanation of the WTF Metal Music interview: So we re-did the interview over MSN Messenger on October 10, 2010. For some reason it took them a while to get it published and when it was about ready, on the morning of November 1, 2010, they sent me a preview, or shared with me the published version. I objected to two things, one was that they had used a Vision Eternel picture with a Vision Lunar logo on it. The second was that I asked for the paragraph about future/new plans to be updated. The split with Bonfires For Nobody had been cancelled a few weeks prior, and I had just decided to do it with Marc Doudin the night before, so that was changed, even though the interview was conducted prior to Doudin being involved.
On November 3rd I recorded another demo for the 4th EP, which was later only known as “In-Between 3” or “Sometimes in Interlude Part 3”. But I didn’t like the sound nor direction that this song was going so I never finished it. With 3 of 4/5 songs “composed” I considered this EP “almost finished” and would likely have had it released in early 2011 had I kept going in that direction, but Soufferance ended up taking over as a priority.
Sometimes In Interlude Part Three (Demo) aka VE4 In-Between 3, November 3rd 2010
I never got to record the other pieces, due to various other emotions coming in and out of my life, mainly Laura and our multiple breakups and reconciliations and Soufferance taking over. I knew ahead of time that Laura would be getting an album for VE. She ended up being the longest relationship at the time, and the subject to a few albums.
November 16th: I emailed and messaged on Last.fm everyone who had posted or reviewed Vision Éternel albums in the past
“Hey chris. I noticed that you had posted every album of Vision Eternel earlier this year, and I appreciate that immensely! I’m almost done with the 4th EP, which should be out VERY shortly and also a split with Marc Doudin, and was wondering if you would like to take this opportunity to cover these news on your site. You can call it a scoop. Maybe you’d like to do an interview or something of the sort.”
December 10th came up with the first artwork design version for split. I designed my side and Marc Doudin sent me some really shitty images for his “side” of the covers (similar to the way it was done for 7″ vinyls. I think that Costin and Asiluum Arts Records was still interested in releasing it at this point.
The original artwork for this album was going to be created from pictures I took myself in January 18th 2010, with Marina Polak’s camera at Parc Jarry in the middle of winter. They turned out bad and amateurish, but I had nothing else to use, and felt I had gotten some sort of decent look to it. I added the band logo to it and that was it.
December 11th 2010: hey silvio! I’m in the band Vision Eternel (if you didnt know already) and i have this split ready. its been ready for a while, and was supposed to be with ethereal beauty, but they broke up. so im looking for a new band to do this awesome split with! i really like nyctalgia and your solo stuff. would you be interested in doing the split together?
>The first person I asked was this junky kid in Switzerland named Silvio Pfiffner from the band Nyctalgia. He had been getting the same fans as VE and a lot of people said we sounded similar. He never replied. This was a difficult moment in humility for me because I despised Nyctalgia and Pfiffner, I thought that his music sucked and was appalled that he was so open publicly about being a fucking junkie. I was also a little jealous because he made music similar to Vision Eternel, but was getting a huge amount of exposure and fans, while Vision Eternel couldn’t get anywhere. So by asking him to do a split, I was putting my pride aside, but inside I was also trying to use his “fame” to shed more light on Vision Eternel.
December 11th 2010: This was the day that I came up with the song titles “Sometimes In”, at around 1:30 am. The “Sometimes In” were going to be for the split while “Moments Of” were going to be for the 4th EP. It was only once the split fell apart that the titles for the 4th EP were changed to “Sometimes In”.
Also asked Tasharg again, by this time was using a different name, Lena Lou, which is when she denied ever agreeing to do a split in early 2009.
December 11th? Asked Garry Brents- this was still in the plans for the split with Marc Doudin. sent him the song. He recorded it on December 17th and sent it to me on December 18th.
January: I felt that these people didn’t want to work with me, so I finally gave up the idea of the split, after working on it for two and a half years. I thought that all the songs that were prosed for the split would remain unreleased b-sides and perhaps see the light of day on the re-issue of “An Anthology Of Past Misfortunes”.
I mostly focused on Soufferance all the way through March of 2011, until I was hit with problems for that band and decided that maybe I should focus on Vision Éternel again. At the same time, Laura broke up with me again and on March 13th of 2011 I hinted on Facebook that a fourth Vision Éternel EP was coming.
3/15/11, 4:28 PM
You sent
next time we work on artwork, i wanna do something like this! id pay you for it too.
You sent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Wee_Small_Hours
In the Wee Small Hours – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org
3/15/11, 5:04 PM
Jeremy
Jeremy Roux
actually we could make an art concept where we re-act famous pics of famous ppl from that era. You pose, I’ll take the pics, could be a cool project?
You sent
im down!
You sent
look up the album cover of Tom Waits – The Heat of Saturday Night
You sent
thats influenced by the sinatra one i sent you
Jeremy
Jeremy Roux
make a list, find the original pics
You sent
wed need close though
You sent
clothes*
You sent
but i got a way.. the basement of teh segal is the wardrobe. and im good friends with the night janitor that has teh keys
You sent
so we could borrow stuff for one night at a time
Jeremy
Jeremy Roux
if somehow it starts your modeling career, I want 10% of everything you make
You sent
im not hot enough for that dude
You sent
wont ever happen
Jeremy
you’re photogenic
Jeremy
Jeremy Roux
photoshop does the rest lol
You sent
if i ever have a modeling profession, ur gonna be my manager anyway
You sent
im not photogenic
-The Last Great Torch Song (August 2011 – March 2012)
When Laura Dolgy broke up with me, yet again, for the final time, on August 17th of 2011, I headed into another depression. But I knew that she had been important enough in my life to receive a Vision Éternel EP of her own, as other important relationships had had before. On August 30th I officially announced the fourth Vision Éternel EP on Facebook.
August 30th:
The new VE album is on its way! It will be called “The Last Great Torch Song”. I will not be signing on it, as the title could imply, but I do promise it to be the most emotional VE album yet! This one features a 1year, 2months, 17days long heartfill that has ended. Plenty to document.
when I announced it in the summer on FB, also announced there would be a follow-up EP
not sure what I was planning to do, a guess is more collaborations?
So when Laura left me for the last time on August 17th 2011, I decided it was time to put the bit of effort I had left in me to release something for her. I had many ideas, including a compilation album, but I wanted to stay in the theme of EPs. I took the two re-recorded songs, and the song composed for Rani and added some unused demos from 2009 and asked Eiman to record a solo over “Narcosis”.
The title “The Last Great Torch Song” was a name that I came up with in the summer of 2011, probably in late June or early July.
Which was first? Murder on Redpath or Soufferance?
Soufferance EP, which later took on the name “Memories of a City”. From roughly July 30th to August 8th it was going to be for Soufferance.
Murder on Redpath Sludgecore band name. Suggested “The Last Great Torch Song” and “Murder on Redpath” at one of these two concerts.
2011-07-10 Death Church (Montreal, QC) Last Excuse, Crucial Times, Hunger
2011-08-08 Death Church (Montreal, QC) Wrong Answer, Harriers, Head Check, Rage Brigade
Late August: I was happy when I finally got to use the title for a Vision Éternel release because it was sentimental like the music. I thought it was a really emotional title and it fit how personal VE was. I named the EP “The Last Great Torch Song” because in some way I don’t think I will have another album that will sound like that again, and perhaps it could have been the final VE album.
September 19th:
There are 2 new Vision Eternel EPs that are going to be released. “The Last Great Torch Song” will be released soon, and is in the post-production stages. Both are dedicated to Laura.
September 20th: second version of first version of artwork with title. adapted the same design I had prepared for the split with Marc Doudin from December of 2010. Changed the colors slightly, made it a little darker, moved up the band logo up to fit the album title under it.
September 26th:
Closer and closer to the new ep “The Last Great Torch Song”!
By early October of 2011 I had come up with the idea of connecting each song together, using the 2009 demos in between the songs. This version was going to have the two re-recordings and the song written for Rani, as well as an extended portion.
October 2nd 2011 this was going to be the track listing of The Last Great Torch Song
- Sometimes in Narcosis
- Sometimes in Anticipation (this was the Rani song, not the extended)
- Sometimes in Neglection (extended at the end)
opened with Narcosis, then interlude one, then Rani, then interlude two, then Neglection, then extended. 10:45 in total.
probably put it together then, October 2nd (assumed date)
Download the first version of the EP
I didn’t like the outcome so I decided to redo it completely. I was probably very unhappy with the titles of this version because it wasn’t keeping up with the previous concepts. Wanted it to spell Laura.
October 12th:
The new Vision Eternel album, “The Last Great Torch Song” will feature 2 guest musicians! probably Eiman here?
December 29th:
Waiting on the contribution from the 2nd featured artist on one of the songs for the new Vision Eternel EP, and then its off to Adam Kennedy for mastering. Hopefully it will be out for February or March 2012, to keep the same months as all previous releases.
Adam Kennedy was my first choice for mastering the album
but he went mia and never responded to my messages
second choice was Garry Brents which turned out to be more expensive than he initially told me and also a big disappointment with the sound he went for.
It took a few months for me to figure out what I was going to include on the final version of the album. It was a huge debate for me. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted this album to come out at all. I thought maybe this would be the last VE album, and possibly even my last album ever. This one was for and about Laura, and it had to represent something incredibly special. It had to be superior to all the previous ones. At some points when I thought this would be my last album, I figured I would need to get everyone musically important to me to be featured on it. But I couldn’t get everyone I wanted, so that forced me to consider doing another album.
February 10th 2012: Me: Hey dude, are you still making music? I wanted to know if youd be interested to add some stuff to a Vision Eternel song for the new album. let me know asap.
February 11th: Nidal: yeah man sure, send some material my way. i’ll work some hocus pocus on it.
Me: Awesome man! Here it is. Let me know when you think you can get something on it by! (send Rani). hey let me know if you feel inspired by the song. i kinda have a deadline on this for it to get mastered.
February 13th: Nidal do u have any other clips of other songs? or is it a single?
Me: its just this song thats left. all the other ones are done. if you dont feel inspired, dont feel bad or anything Feb 14th: yeah man, not feelin this one the most.
asked Nidal again, for Rani song, and he stalled on it for weeks (?) until I asked him and he told me he was uninspired by the music.
That was the last time he and I ever spoke, until years later when he messaged me out of nowhere wanting to borrow money.
I had the two re-recordings, the song for Rani, the extended portion and three demos from 2009, which all sounded inferior. I had a Soufferance b-side that was having a lot of trouble getting released, and everyone I knew, including myself, thought this was the best song I had ever done. It was Fully Hollow, and I was struggling with the song since it’s completion as to whether it was a Soufferance song or a VE song. The sound was really somewhere in between. My final decision was to include it on the album, and use only one of the three 2009 demos as the extended portion of the album. The original extended portion would be altered. From this point on, I asked three musicians to collaborate on the album. First off, I finally got Eiman to contribute to Narcosis. He felt that a spoken word would fit best on it, and what he offered was absolutely brilliant and fit perfectly the theme of the band. Howard Eichenblatt, who know went under the name Howard Change, contributed spoken word vocals on Fully Hollow. And finally Alexander Fawcett contributed guitar and bass to the original extended portion, which became a song on its own.
once I decided to include Fully Hollow on The Last Great Torch Song, that’s when it really took shape.
need dates for guest recordings
on January 30th, after receiving the parts from Fawcett, I recorded additional guitar and ebow for Anticipation. I recorded the very ending on guitar, and also an ebow slide throughout the song to make it more “epic”.
I also had to come up with a new tracklisting and song titles. This was about Laura, and it also had two songs that went under other names, so I wanted to keep those names in somehow. This was the first time that the song names were extended to four words, instead of the usual three. This was mostly done by necessity rather than anything else, but the names came out sounding decent.
Extended changed from having no name to taking Anticipating Moments, which meant that the Rani song changed from Anticipation to Underlying Sadness.
- Sometimes in Longing Narcosis
- Sometimes in Anticipating Moments
- Sometimes in Underlying Sadness
- Sometimes in Reminiscent Neglection
- Sometimes in Absolute Togetherness
I knew that the artwork I had created was going to be the least impressive of the Vision Éternel releases and I wasn’t truly happy with it, especially since Jeremy was telling me it wasn’t good and I respected his opinion. I didn’t want to hire someone for the artwork because I was on such a small budget, and also on a deadline with myself. I remembered that the photograph I had used for the last album had a portion on it that I really liked, which was cut out of the “Abondance de périls” cover. When Marina and I discussed the original artwork, I wanted to use the portion with the couple on the artwork but she thought that the crashing wave would be more appropriate to the title and more effective. Seeing as I always preferred the other side of the image, and it seemed so perfectly romantic, that these people were holding on to each other through this deluge, it represented the last great torch song, an immense feeling of love and neediness.
I decided to use it, and tint it blue, to fit the mood. This turned out really well, and it didn’t cost me anything more than to credit Marina Polak once again.
February 20th new artwork with Polak picture
Feb 20th: to Jeremy: The new VE ep is sent for mastering!
hopefully it will be done by the end of the week
and then you can listen to it and tell me which song you feel is best for a music video from the footage you took
Feb 22nd tell Jeremy: I was thinking of possibly having a presentation video for the new EP
but it kind of depends on you…
it would look fucking awesome if we could film it at the lights festival or at nuit blanche by place des arts with all those colors
So he mastered it again to the mood that I preferred, a more personal, soft listening experience.
I was never happy with his third mastering but I felt bad asking him to do it all over again a third time, with the deal he was giving me. I also felt like he wouldn’t be able to distance himself from the general sound he was giving the production. I didn’t have the money to get someone else to master it so I settled with Garry’s second mastering.
This was my first time releasing music for sale from the start, as opposed to the first 4 APR releases that were originally free downloads, but that I later changed to payable music. Kailash had a contract with APR, which gave them a cut of the profits. but they leaked their album to every blog out there a day before the release so the whole thing was a flop. Instead of spending my days promoting the releases, I spent my day sending copyright takedown notices to blogs and servers. Because of this, The Last Great Torch Song received minimal exposure.
The Last Great Torch Song first digital flyer
The Last Great Torch Song second digital flyer
The Last Great Torch Song album front cover
March 26th 2012 hard drive crash, 12 days after the release and I lost a lot of things.
also had a computer crash and hard drive failure really shortly after the release, like less than a month after? So I lost a lot of things
had to redo the artwork from scratch later when I wanted to do vinyls. somehow ended up using the wrong blue.
change of artwork over the years
January 17th 2017 remastered the album for CDs
- Sometimes in Longing Narcosis
- Sometimes in Anticipating Moments
- Sometimes in Underlying Sadness
- Sometimes in Reminiscent Neglection
- Sometimes in Absolute Togetherness
All music composed and performed by Vision Éternel.
Vision Éternel is the creation of Alexandre Julien.
Music recorded at Mortified Studios from October of 2009 to January of 2012.
Produced and mixed by Alexandre Julien at Mortified Studios from October of 2009 to January of 2012.
Mastered by Garry Brents at GAB Recordings from February 22nd of 2012 to February 26th of 2012.
Keyboards on “Sometimes in Longing Narcosis” written performed by Garry Brents. Recorded at GAB Recordings on December 17th of 2010.
Spoken word on “Sometimes in Longing Narcosis” written and spoken by Eiman Nejad. Recorded at REP Studios on February 4th of 2012.
Additional guitar and bass on “Sometimes in Anticipating Moments” written and performed by Alexander Fawcett. Recorded at Cryptic Orchard Studios from January 21st of 2012 to January 30th of 2012.
Spoken word on “Sometimes in Absolute Togetherness” written and spoken by Howard Change. Recorded at The Living Studio on February 12th of 2012.
Photography by Marina Polak.
Artwork and layout by Alexandre Julien.
Released on March 14th of 2012 through Abridged Pause Recordings – APR6.
All songs released are exclusively registered to Abridged Pause Publishing.
The Last Great Torch Song is dedicated to Laura Dolgy.