Introduction

It’s been a few weeks since the release of Eckhart’s latest album, He’s Dancing, He Says He Will Never Die on Blizzard Audio Club. This is the third album from the project, originally created by John Silvestre, which is now a trio featuring drummer Laurent Glur (Fomies) and vocalist Olivia Madhuri.

The debut album, Far From God, introduced the world to Eckhart’s mixture of post-punk and industrial music, and the instrumental album, Deadglass / Get Rid Of Everything Vol.1, was released a few months later. He’s Dancing, He Says He Will Never Die is an interesting evolution which explores more of his influences, mixes acoustic and electronic drums, and the project seems to be “more accessible” to listeners who aren’t so familiar to industrial music.

For those wanting to know more about John and Eckart, I published our video interview from November 2025 in two articles. Part one appeared in February and focuses on John’s journey, whereas part two, published in May, goes in to detail about Eckhart.

Having enjoyed He’s Dancing, He Says He Will Never Die a lot, I asked John to provide an insight into the creation of the songs and the background of the most recent album. I would like to thank him for telling us more about it.

(If you like to know more about the stories behind albums, there are more Track by track articles at the end under “Related articles”).

Introduction from Eckhart

This album is the third LP under the name ECKHART and the first one we recorded together with Laurent Glur on drums.

It was challenging to arrange and mix electronic and acoustic drums altogether, but the opportunity to make our sound evolve was one of the most exciting things about this album.

I’m pretty happy with the production and the overall sound. I asked Paul Alkhallaf (with whom I have worked with for the last 15 years) to help me with the drums mixing, and Sebastien Politi, also an old friend of mine, to do the mastering. We went for a less compressed/harsh sound than the first LP Far From God, but it was a choice to preserve more dynamics and to give this album another identity, closer to bands like Beastie Boys or early Prodigy.

The title

The title comes from the last words in Cormac McCarthy’s novel (American author which I’m a huge fan of) Blood Meridian, an amazing novel, featuring one of the most haunting character ever depicted, Judge Holden. I thought it sounded post-punk and fitted well the energy and vibe of the album: dancing and letting it all go while exploring deep topics such as fate, love, death and modern aspects of alienation and social conformism.

It also has kind of a cynical view on western nihilism. The title could represent both a motto to live by, but could also embody this nihilistic and western self-centered individualistic vision of the world. A consumer in a world torn apart by war and misery. Childish. Inconsequent.

You can interpret it as you like.

Even though some tracks still have this dark-deep mood and lyrics explore existential topics, I think it’s quite a fun and ecstatic record, closer to the experience we have while playing it.

I think our music is engaging, both for us and the listener. To me at least.

The cover

The cover is a beautiful painting made by Aladin Commend, a friend of mine and amazing artist, inspired by the last scene depicted in Blood Meridian.

Hope you’ll enjoy!

HE SAYS HE WILL NEVER DIE

Instrumental introduction.

In the previous instrumental album (Deadglass / Get Rid Of Everything Vol.1), I tried to explore more breakcore / ambient / vaporware arrangements and tools. Winter dragged me into nostalgia and melancholia as changes occurred in my life. I listened to a lot of Daniel Lopatin (Chuck Person, Oneohtrix Point Never), Aphex Twin, Sewerslvt, Goreshit, with an active ear and humbly tried to understand the processes and experiment towards these kind of sounds. I was there musically and emotionally when I made this track.

It’s like a bridge between our previous LP and this one, and a light and playful introduction before we go into heavier tracks.

STEREO

The intro leads straight into the second track, Stereo.

It has this old-school Prodigy vibe (Fat Of The Land, Music For New Jilted Generation…), high tempo, vocals a bit influenced by Nine Inch Nails, samples from old house-funk bands and modern Japanese punk/DnB. It’s kind of meta to me, I’m talking about the music itself, the stereo between what seem to be opposite influences in space and time, embodied by Laurent’s drums solo battling with electronic breakcore chops, but also about the human dichotomy and how we manage contradictory signals in modern society.

ALIVE

To feel alive is to deal with a lot of shit.

To me it has always been endless back and forths between either taking everything or nothing seriously.

End up struggling with lack of meaning, frustration, angst, drugs, flesh, everything in the matter’s world.

You either accept or deny your inner contradictions. Sometimes what you need is simply to get to the bottom of it. To get back in touch with some kind of connection with the world and others.

The track is heavy, tribal, primal. Lower tempo. Sampled some old US advertisements and borrowed one of Miyazaki’s chords progression.

ALL STARS FADE

This one basically talks about suicide. When you feel like you suffocate and despite all your efforts you don’t belong in this world. And the fear that you may have been there before, either in another life or in this one, and that you are doomed to process and repeat. Process and repeat. And the only light you see is far, far above the surface.

Loneliness. The idea that you’ve lost all your idols and heroes. And now the world feels empty. Beauty, mysteries are demystified, or have permanently left this world.

I remember when I was a teenage and I knew I wanted to make music, I wanted to save the world, you know.

Then you grow up and you may think : what is there to be saved?

CRACKED EGG

Continuating at higher pace, we get back to some breakcore inspirations : melodic, high tempo dnb rythmics, atmospheric samples and sensitive vocals and lyrics. It’s a really moving track.

After the pain and violence of All Stars Fade and the picture of you drowning in the abyss of the darkest ocean, here you’re lift up and you may find some comfort in the endless void of space.

It’s the first track of the album featuring Olivia Madhuri. I love the tension between her pure, melodic, cristalline voice and the abrasive drumming and instrumentation surrounding her. It really embodies the feeling of peace and focus in the midst of chaos:

Maybe there’s no need to save anything. Maybe everything is what and where it’s meant to be, and maybe you don’t have nothing more to expect, no reasons to creep around. Maybe your true purpose is to retire from this world and to go back where you belong, the stars. A spark in the dark. And you will anyway. It’s kind of a sad idea, but it sets you free.

And if you think that nothing else deserves to be taken seriously, well maybe that’s freedom.

INLOVE

This is probably the “poppiest” track on the record. It’s an hommage to Sewerslvt (now renamed CYNthoni), one of the best atmospheric breakcore project I’ve discovered these last years, and one that really made me want to make this kind of music. It’s a love declaration, to music, to our dreams and aspirations, to what we’ve lost and to what we may be afraid to get attached to.

WICKED GAME

One day Olivia was singing Chris Isaac’s song at home. The idea hit me to make a version of this iconic hit, but colder. Industrial.

It’s a monument of pop culture, we’ve all heard this song, and same as what I did with Where Is My Mind? on Eckhart’s first LP, Far From God, I wanted to be radical with the interpretation. I sampled it, played it in reverse, chopped it a hundred times, with this dark-kraut-noise atmosphere. It’s the only track of the album with guitars on it. Sounds closer to bands like Swans or NIN.

(Photo copyrights: Mehdi Benkler)

It’s interesting because I think the original song, which talks about the fear of loving someone and the intuition that this love is gonna hurt you, manifest this topic with an aery, melancholic, dreamy tone. It’s a feeling we’ve all experienced, and it’s a tune we can all smoothly dilute our pain into. And it works perfectly because Chris Isaak’s song is sad, beautiful, but it doesn’t really drag you down. It’s more uplifting.

But in reality, this is a fucking awful feeling. Falling in love with someone you know you should not, but going there anyway and ending up ripped apart to the point where you don’t even know who you are anymore. The worst loneliness you can feel, ‘cause you’re alone with someone. It’s cold. Harsh. Tense. Painful. But it teaches you a lot. This kind of encounter in life really changes you forever.

I wanted to express the tension behind this twisted love and also the disinterest of it. Something cold, struggling with its own incarnation. A pain of the soul that is lost within itself.

PARASITE

I started this one with the electronic drums, which I sampled from an old track I made with my first post-rock band Magnolia, almost 20 years ago. Laurent jammed on it with this cuban Songo groove. I found it really interesting, so we arranged it a bit to make it fit better with the electronics. I love the urgency of the first part and the contrast with the melodic and aery mood of the second part.

It talks about music, musicians in general, the devotion, heart and soul you have to put in it and the struggles that come with it and that most of the artists experience : frustration, loneliness, doubts.

APOSTATIC SELECTION

This is probably the most post-punk song on the album. There ain’t much electronic drums on this one, it’s mostly raw and acoustic. Vocals are also more melodics. It’s pretty cynical and talk about conformism. Even though I have digressed in the lyrics, I wrote it at the beginning of the genocide in Palestine. The “I don’t wanna be part of you” part was written before the rest of the track, one night I just needed to scream this mantra for at least half an hour. To protect myself and heal my sanity from all the footages we’ve all seen about children being murdered and innocents being burned alive. And the western world denying its responsibility in it. All this angst coming from witnessing suffering and injustice 24h/24h.

BLASTED MIRRORS

This is the track that won the M4Music last year. The last track of the album and the first one I composed for it, two years ago.

This was total playground. I wanted to compose solely with samples and mixed a lot of various influences : you can hear Tupac, a Shipibo traditional chant, Kenji Kawai, Jimi Hendrix, Chemical Brothers, drums corps percussions…

It talks about money, La Société du Spectacle by Guy Debord who really changed my view of seeing the world when I read it in my twenties.

Credits:

John Silvestre: vocals, guitar, lyrics, production, mixing
Laurent Glur: drums
Olivia Madhuri: vocals on Cracked Egg and Wicked Game
Paul Alkhallaf: drums mixing
Sebastien Politi: mastering
Cover: Aladin Commend

Links:

Related articles:

Track by tracks:

Interview with John Silvestre (and an article mentioning Eckhart):

Vevey:

Track by track: Eckhart - He's Dancing, He Says He Will Never Die

Introduction

Introduction from Eckhart

The title

The cover

Credits:

Interview with Bandit Voyage