Alma. Habitants

Habitants debuted on this blog with its beautiful single 'Codfishing' earlier this year. Today the album receives the attention it deserves. Alma is the album one would expect after listening to 'Codfishing'. It takes the listener on a trip where dreams are revisited time and again. The music as it were allows you to lay down on it and float on it like you would in the Dead Sea's water. You slowly float along all the musical views and highlights while the only thing you as listener have to do is close your eyes, relax and enjoy.

Habitants is the band founded by The Gathering guitarist and producer René Rutten, with singer Anne van den Hoogen, guitarist Gema Pérez, bassist Mirte Heutmekers and drummer Jerôme Miedendorp de Bie. They have released one previous album, 'One Self' in 2018 that passed me by. The Gathering can be found in my record collection, with cds from decades ago by now. Singer Anne van den Hoogen is found there as well as singer-songwriter Rosemary & Garlic. She described her 2023 album 'A Room Of One's Own' as follows:  “If you put on the music, I would hope that it would stop you somewhere in your tracks for just a second, just to feel some comfort and some kind of beauty.” This quote says it all for Alma as well.

The dreamy, if not trippy music on Alma truly lets a listener drift away. Close your eyes, just listen to the music on your headphones and you are gone from everything bothering you on this earth. Habitants will draw you into its musical world and only ejects you at the end of Alma, with a clear invitation to join for another ride.

Escapism is nice for a while but not a sustainable model for any one in the long run. Habitants is not guilty of that. What the band does, is offer some comfort and support in hard times and happy times. It invites all to join this trip. The band works hard to provide you with all this.

Promo photo

The music presented deserves the name symphonic rock, laced with elements containing both dreamy triphop ballads and huge rock, like in 'If I Knew' where the band really lets it rip at the end. Fairytales is the final addition I would opt for. The music is what I would expect to be played while a character walks through the woods or another adventure in a fairytale. Ethereal, dreamlike are the vocals of Van den Hoogen, just like the music accompanying her - and standing on its own. Most songs are drawn out, in the sense that chord progressions are slow, stretched out, making use of the surprise experience when the chord does change. Yet, never without overdoing it, making a song boring. Habitants knows how to keep up suspense in the right way.

I have not found an explanation for the album title, Alma. Usually, Alma refers to Alma Mahler, who has been a muse (and wife or lover) for several important men. The woman on the cover could be her though.

The hand of René Rutten is clearly present in Habitants. The references to his other band The Gathering can be heard in the dreamy rock sequences, where with a little imagination it's possible to hear Anke van Giersbergen singing the parts. The differences are larger though. Habitants explores the triphop side of its music extensively and manages to combine it with its symphonic rock side quite successfully, resulting in a song like 'The Waiting Room' and album opener 'Highways' where the two become fully intertwined.

With Alma Habitants has made an album that should draw a lot of attention from lovers of different kinds of music. In 2024 I so far have not heard anything like it better. Belgium project Haze comes close with its mini album 'Out Of Sight'. Habitants leads the pack though.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order Alma here:

https://habitantsband.bandcamp.com/album/alma