Univers Zéro - Crawling Wind (1983, EP)

Toujours Plus à l'Est is almost counterintuitive for a Univers Zéro track, and yet it's my go to one when I need a quick fix. Technically it is very much their own work, all syncopation times square, but at the same time it just sounds out of character, joyfully glorious (even if still slightly menacing in its sheer energy; like a big cat brought up in captivity still can't discern by human patterns when it might be playing too rough with its handlers), as if it came from a parallel universe where Daniel Denis had learned to use major chords in composition, or hadn't been exposed to Lovecraft in his youth. 

Followed swiftly in the track sequence by the exacting (and very much on the nose) gloom of "Before the Heat" and "Central Belgium in the Dark", clearly that wasn't meant to last, though; so the brilliance of Toujours Plus à l'Est, alongside all lost hopes and dreams, stands on, across the multiverse, as a shining beacon for the path not taken.