I heard a professor speaking the other day, a man of letters. He explained literature as a circle. On its perimeter there were revolutions, great changes, and once these agents of disruption arose they tended to move towards the center and lose their power. The cultural movement feeds on what is on the margins. On the margins of the charts, of sales, of visibility, trends are fished from there, from what used to be called underground and which until before the social media era was considered cool while today it is suddenly downgraded to not influential because it has few numbers, few likes or little hype. The center, or the mainstream, is a great festivity of gala chaos, in which the centripetal force of the elements tends to cancel out.
From the other end of the phone, near the Pyrenees: «Today in full globalization who the hell wants to be poor and cursed? (He laughs) When I was twenty it was the dream, it meant you had made it. Literature belonged to the maudits, to the suicides of society. Now people want Black Friday (laughs again). But you know, I would be who I am even if I had been born twenty years later. If you have access to culture, to books, you cannot end up solely and exclusively expressing yourself on TikTok. If you are a sensitive person, and we all are, art opens incredible doors for you that also go against the system. I am made of books, records and films. Art is the thing that has marked me most in life.”
And while this hypnotic Italian-French chant speaks, Amaury Cambuzat, leader of Ulaanbaatar, walks producing a chime that echoes in the almost deserted metro tunnel. “Are you wearing boots?” I ask him, imagining him as a cool dark cowboy, a Blade Runner. “No, my sister has arrived.” We both laugh and for a moment the tension is released.
The truth is that the more I talk to him the more I would like to visit him, follow him to the studio and maybe write something with him or simply watch his writing. Without purpose, without wanting to feature, just to see what a poet looks like up close, to be blessed and feel less alone.
It doesn't take long to be inspired by him. Amaury is clear, he is someone who has built a solid philosophy. Appeared in Italy in the 90s also thanks to the applause of the CSI who wanted them on tour with them (and they published two albums for the Consorzio Produci Indipendenti, ed), Ulaanbaatar were a reference for the entire underground. Except that today the underground is finished, disappeared, dissolved. And that's all our chat is about.
Amaury, are you where you would like to be today or not? «No no, I think I have this problem. The place is where the heart is, where you have affection. I'm fine where I am with the people I love, but where to stay is the big question I've been asking myself all my life. Recently I've also been thinking about getting a camper and leaving, giving up everything. I want to meet people. I have traveled a lot in life thanks to the fact that I played in great bands like Faust. I toured Mexico, America, a lot of countries. By traveling you realize that you want to do something, that you are wasting time.”
We often think about it too, when we clock in for a compromised job that allows us to get by. But just like us, Amaury also wonders how to fuel the dream.
«The trick is having the courage for so many years because you often question yourself. You know, you don't make records because you have to earn money but because you have something to say otherwise it's better to do another job. For me it was realizing what I had in mind. It usually took me a year or two to make a record, but this one was a birth. I started and I said to myself: can anyone still be interested? Who the hell will ever listen to this? I continue a bit for sport, as long as I have something to say I'll do it, but I don't have high expectations. Every year I question myself even though at my age I would struggle to find a decent job, right? I carry on, I also work as a producer and I manage to earn a paycheck, but it has become impossible.”
Leave, give up everything. It is no coincidence that he called the band Ulaanbaatar, which in the 90s before the internet was an unknown, unattainable destination. So much so that there has never been and it drives me crazy. «I chose it on purpose because it was unattainable, I see myself there in ten years. I mean rock a bit like the last frontier of adventure that is still possible. At least I thought it was possible without going to business school and ending up doing a frustrating job.” All this talk becomes clearer to me after I listened to the band's new album for a few days, which had been silent since 2017.
The title leaves no doubt: Dark Times. But be careful, I don't necessarily intend this as a criticism these dark times, but the usual challenge that men of all ages have faced one day when they realized that the time on earth granted to them was limited. What had they done up to that point? «I'm 55 soon and I haven't seen time pass. It was too fast.”
Just as this album is fast, which I listen to on headphones in the waiting room at the local health authority, in line at the toll booth, in line at the supermarket checkout when I'm at the peak of stress. At that point the sharp guitars and the rarefied tempos of the drums tear me away from reality, taking me elsewhere. I need medicine there. I don't even understand anything because the singing is half French, half English, a little Italian: in short, a pastiche that speaks the language of the unconscious to me. I see smells, I feel colors, this is lysergic Dark Times.
It's like spending an evening at the Tacheles in Berlin in 2001. They sound like the reverberations of the Bad Seeds; the warm beers of the community center in the dark; the smell of opium incense in illegal festivals; the dark and solemn atmospheres of Only lovers survive of Jarmusch; the ghostly marching rhythm of a platoon of time rangers; Lynch smoking a cannon with Battiato and then they do meditation.
The titles look like the title page of The flowers of evil: Dark Times (Dark Times); Enfer (To hell); Solitaire (Solitary), in which he also sings: “Solitaire, étranger sur Terre / Solidaire… / Rien à dire mais l'envie d'écrire / Sur ton mur, sur ta peau, mes maux, ces mots: solidaire en solitaire” (“Lonely, a stranger on Earth / Nothing to say except the impulse to write / on your wall, on your skin, my troubles, these words: solidarity in solitude”). In Ravageeight beautiful acoustic minutes, the peak of the album: “La vie, la mort, la joie / Mon espoir sans fin / La soif, mes pleurs et ma faim / À la dérive, j'y pense souvent Sur le rivage de tes ravages” (“Life, death, joy / My infinite hope / Thirst, my tears and my hunger / Adrift, I often think of us on the shore of your devastations / My devastations”).
Well yes, everything adds up even if we don't understand anything. You have proof of this by listening to the weird chanting in track number five Perdu au bon endroitwhich poetically translated would be: lost in the right place. Like us in these dark times.
