Past & Secrets is the project of guitarist, Yohan Delasalle. His debut album, Memories, was released in 2020, and come 2024, he has released a sophomore work, Another Day, Another Time.
The artist himself describes his music as a unique fusion of atmospheric, ambient, and djent elements, so let’s look at all five tracks, and listen to some of it. Except for the guest artists I mention, all instruments were performed by Delasalle.
We open with Above Us, featuring a guest artist, Greg Schollaert, whose guitar work is wonderful. A bright opening passage gives way then to something distinctly heavier, thumping riffs underlaying the delicate guitar, bright keys punctuating the noise, looking up to the infinite, before the gloom is lifted to the sense of the opening, the riffs returning to close, but with a distinctly optimistic tone, the solo guitar as good as you will hear all year, and the drums are exceptional, as throughout the EP. A solid start to proceedings, indeed.
Come on Board features Radek Stojda whose improvisation of Steven Wilson’s Ancestral is worth a look on YouTube. This track is embedded below. Listen to the skins work, and I like the keys notes which fly over the heavy undertones, before we get a wonderfully delicate ambient segment just short of three minutes in. The guitar solo when it arrives is another killer, and this is very strong instrumental hard rock.
World features Brian Bajak, whose work with Miloš Meier can be viewed on YouTube. This track is as delightful an example of Djent as is possible to hear and is a contender for this website’s “instrumental of the year”. Hard and fast, yet fragile and playful, with a brilliant guitar burst and quality synth work above the riffs.
Sleep Well, Little Child features Mika Dienst Ibanez. The steps at the start are disturbing, almost as if a threatening person is walking loudly without fear towards you in a long corridor, the end of which is not a pleasant thing to consider. I have embedded this prog metal delight below for you, as decent a musical example of Delaselle’s written descriptor as you will get.
It all closes with Together on a Mountain, featuring Demetrio Scopelliti, whose website https://www.demetrioscopelliti.it/ is well worth a visit. The start is full of anticipation of the trek upwards to come, and the thumping riffs when they arrive signify the beginning, with some wonderfully atmospheric guitar work providing for the companionship felt when tackling the elements, represented here by the thumping rhythm riffs. The guitar solo is expressive and warm, the close at the peak of the trek triumphal.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this classy instrumental EP, and those of you who enjoy prog metal should definitely head over to https://pastandsecrets.bandcamp.com/