Valsepère & Bulie Jordeaux

In the beginning, there was fire. Around it, human beings gathered. They warmed themselves, shared their stories, sang. Then they began to draw circles. To name the things they called their own. To distinguish those who belonged inside from those who did not. And the fire that was meant to protect them from the darkness became a weapon with which they could annihilate their neighbours.

We have been looking for excuses ever since. War, we are told, is written into our genes. An inheritance from the beast we once were, before becoming those extraordinary animals capable of building cathedrals, composing symphonies, and methodically orchestrating their own destruction. But if war comes naturally to us, why does it take so many speeches, so many flags, so many lies to persuade us to wage it?

It is from this contradiction that War Is (Not) Part of Human Nature emerges, the debut release on the newly founded Endless Passion label. To explore this age-old human affliction, Valsepère & Bulie Jordeaux summon another ghost from the past: trip-hop. Born in the 1990s, somewhere between hip-hop, dub and the ghosts of rock music, the genre is now experiencing something of a renaissance. As though an age saturated with speed and violence had suddenly felt the need to slow down and contemplate its own ruins. Slowed-down rhythms, deep basslines, voices suspended in mid-air: haunted music for a world that cannot stop reliving its nightmares.

In "Beast", the creature awakens. It has been with us since that first fire, like a shadow whose origins we have long forgotten. But this beast is not merely the one that devours. It is also the one that protects, that invents, that builds shelters and sings alongside others. The very instinct that drives us to defend our own can lead us to destroy those belonging to someone else. Civilisation has not eliminated the animal. It has merely equipped it with more sophisticated tools.

With "Point of View", the battlefield shrinks. It is now small enough to fit between two people. Where one sees a promise, the other perceives a threat. Where one sees blue, the other sees green. Neither is necessarily lying. Neither even needs to be wrong. Sometimes, two sincerely held truths, separated by no more than a few inches of pride, are enough to give birth to conflict. And so the grand sweep of History begins all over again, in miniature, within the walls of a bedroom.

Then comes "We Died". Death, that marvellous invention of the universe which makes us all equal, though always a little too late. Victors and vanquished, lovers and enemies, all end up in the same place. And so one question remains: was all that sacrifice worth it? History repeats itself. The ego outlives those it has destroyed. And once again, we discover that we have spent our entire existence defending things we could never take with us.

War is part of human nature.

War is not part of human nature.

Between these two statements lies a pair of parentheses. A space so small, and yet perhaps large enough to contain the whole of our freedom: the freedom not to confuse what we are capable of with what we are condemned to do.