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| Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds | |
Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus
[Mute/Labels]
Hardly one year after "Nocturama", here's the latest release of Nick Cave, which is made of two albums you can find in the same pretty box. Apparently, the departure of Blixa Bargeld (who decided to work full-time on his own artistic projects) didn't slow Bad Seeds' prolific adventure down, and this double album, recorded last Spring in Paris in the Ferber's studios, doesn't lack inspiration. Those of you who were bored by the piano ballads from "Boatman's Call" or "No More Shall We Part" will be pleased to find on "Abattoir Blues" a more consistent orchestration, more sustained tempos, especially with the Gospel choirs (the London Community Gospel Choir) and, above all, the rage, we thought had calmed down with the years, has reappeared! Reinvigorated, overflowing with anger and love, Nick Cave preaches on tracks rooted in Blues and Negro spiritual. Slightly calmer and more introspective, "The Lyre of Orpheus" is also crossed by the poetic breath which is typical to the band. That's what it's all about here: we're talking of poetry, the one that allowed Orpheus to cross the Deads' realm to find his lost love, the one which transcends and transforms profane things in holy things. Inspiring himself with Black music, Nick Cave delivers a luminous and dark duality, sometimes trivial, sometimes spiritual, telling the blood, the love, the violence, the sex and the divine with the charisma of a fiery preacher.
Laure Cornaire |
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Le Journal du Dormeur
[EDT]
Cynfeirdd
[Hide & Seek]
Two records, two names, but almost just one band. Since 2002, Liesbeth Houdjik often sings on the Nouvelles Lectures Cosmopolites' records, Julien Ash's project, and with the help of Pierre-Yves Lebeau (her band-mate within Hide & Seek), she naturally gives birth to A Sparrow-Grass Hunt, a mixed french-dutch band. On their first album, "Le Journal du Dormeur", the band visits the world of tales with an ambient music that we could swear it's been composed outdoor. Experimental and untypical, this record is divided into four sleep cycles with classy, warm and colourful compositions full of fairy figures. Every track is like a picture of a journey where the absurd has never been so real nor orchestrated with so many violins and synths. This is a magical record, where heavenly voices and spoken words gather around a sampler in the woods. Meantime, the new Hide & Seek album entitled "European Landscapes" comes out. Liesbeth and Pierre-Yves are on their own for this record that sometimes remind of Trees Dance for its dance-heavenly-voices-pop music (Towards the Sun). Made of nine mastered tracks where French, English, German, male and female vocals alternate for a short time duration (hardly half an hour) with guitars and way much colder keyboards than Julien Ash's ones, Hide & Seek make us feel that autumn is already there. And they prove it with music and images thanks to the ten different CD sleeves, a true collection of landscapes at dawn, all European certified, of course.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Pas de bras, pas de chocolat
[Labels]
We discovered Bertrand Betsch and his ways a la "Dominique Adamo" in 1997 with the album "La Soupe à la grimace". Since then, the guy went his own way, and is now closer to the Belgian (Salvatore) than the French (Dominique), he manages to offer us a powerful hit (Pas de bras pas de chocolat), and a perfect and rather charming album, we don't get tired of, as each listening brings a new surprise. This rather engaging album is classy and easygoing, faithful to the kind of French music we like here. We bet that one of these tracks (Pas de bras..., Le Lundi c'est maladie or Temps beau) might quickly find its way to the ill-frequented top charts, so much theses apparently old-fashioned songs, are rich and engaging, but we could also easily keep them for ourselves.
Christophe Labussière |
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Medúlla
[Barclay]
Breathing, panting, gruntings, scrapings, whistlings are as many effects that are surrounding Björk's voice and allow it to get rid of all instruments, making of "Medúlla" a really organic album. It's like if the diva needed to prove that the beauty of her previous opuses didn't only rest upon the subtle arrangements made by prodigies like Howie B. and Mark Bell. But here, the work on the "vocal" accompaniment is so impressive that it's not really wise to talk of "a capella" performance, the gifted people who surround Björk (Robert Wyatt, Rhazel (The Roots), Mike Patton (Faith No More), the Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis, Shlomo or the Japanese Dokaka) create a surprising instrumentation. In the end, the result isn't really successful, because, even if "Medúlla" is another chosen piece to add to Björk's discography, her performance seems a bit lazy, and is only saved by her colleagues' work and the production (Matmos, Mark Bell, Mark 'Spike' Tent) who give to the whole an amazing charm.
Christophe Labussière |
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Bloc Party EP
[Wichital]
Bloc Party is the latest newcomer from England: this quartet who still has only a few singles and this EP underits belt, managed to draw the attention of most of the Anglo-Saxon musical press and of the influential MTV2. The reason why? An excellent single, Banquet (present on this EP), which, thanks to its high and loud vocal, its heavy drums and its new-wave guitars, has become a real dancefloor-rock hit that could make Franz Ferdinand or The Rapture turn green with jealousy. But a good single doesn't mean "good band", we'll have to wait for their first album (which should be released at the begining of 2005) to see if this general infatuation was founded. In the meantime, we have to admit that this EP is worth listening to, even the other tracks that are obviously less striking than the single, are interesting: you'll appreciate Staying Fat, She's Hearing Voices or the very efficient (or exasperating depending on the opinion) electro remix of Banquet. So, even if it doesn't justify all the hype that surrounds the band, this EP is undeniably promising for the future.
Renaud Martin |
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Cocoon
[Optical Sound]
It's not difficult to find who's hiding behind this strange project so much it's rare to meet an architect able to link so easily and with so much talent precision and melodies, especially when they're addictive and crafty. Indeed, Christophe Demarthe of Clair Obscur, is the one behind Cocoon (produced by Norsq) and he brings a bit of fresh air to the French scene as the latter, a bit stuck up behind its laptops, can't give some body to its softwares. Cocoon carries us in completely electronic territories (between ambient, collage and click'n'cut), and the stroll is very pleasant and original. As a true acoustic plastic artist, he proposes some bitter-sweet experimentations and audaciously constructed compositions, always favouring melody to create an amazingly digest album. Cocoon also offers a CD-Rom part, made by Servovalve who, we'll always state it, is a really talented computer graphist. One more reason to get this complete work.
Christophe Labussière |
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The Powder Blind Dream
[Darla/LTM]
It's always a great surprise when a band reforms itself after twenty years of silence. The surprise often turns to disappointment, but sometimes, it turns to enthusiasm. In Crispy Ambulance case, a "Factory" stamped band, close to Joy Division and Manchester cold ambiences, the come-back album, "Scissorgun", the second studio album of their career, was undeniably a total success. But then, we didn't expect any following as we thought the band only released this second record to successfully pass their mid-age crisis; or we could have feared that a new album, created with "normal" deadlines, i.e. without the twenty years of musical frustrations which previously drove them to produce an album, might be a total failure with no inspiration whatsoever.
The four old post-punk members of Crispy Ambulance prove us now, with this superb "The Powder Blind Dream", that they kept intact the talent and originality that made a cult band of them. The myth is dead as the band is reborn from its ashes, and even if it's not newspapers' headlines, as the times are dedicated to other musical styles, their music is still the best way to get high emotions, mixing anger, cynicism, coldness and sadness. Alan Hempsall sings like a possessed man on a background of omnipresent, padded and almost psychedelic guitars (we think of Dr Phibes & the House of Wax Equations) that cut like ice. The bass, typical of this genre, sings all along without yielding to the guitar, as for the drums, they make matters "worse" with their rhythmics, dancing and monolithic at the same time. The synthesizer re-appears a bit, with its long lost sounds, far from techno, reserved for little surrealistic or anguishing touches.
You'll be amazed by the "Brazilian" ravings of Triphammer, you'll travel in time with the ghosts of cold Manchester on Four Line Whip or Lucifer Rising, you'll brush against despair with Bad Self and you'll float in the existentialist nothingness of Chimera, but you won't stay indifferent to these raw emotion little tracks coming from the unexplored zones of your brain, somewhere between dream and nightmare.
At the end of the album, we wonder how we could have lived twenty years without this band.
Frédéric Thébault |
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Futur Ultra
[Discordian Records]
In 1987, when the house music appeared, it became obvious for all the EBM artists, as for the dancefloors' fans, that the mixing of genres like dance, electro and experimentations could create a very exciting new music. So in 1999, one of the pioneer of the destroy-electro, Gabi Delgado, ex-DAF, got together with Saba Komossa, a well-known name of the Berlin underground, to form Delkom, a synthetic duo who made, then, the good days of the night clubs. Fifteen years was necessary to release this album in CD, and so, we have the occasion to apprehend this object, now in 2004. The result is there: a long loop of repetitive sequencers (a pleonasm), almost no melody, an endless martial rhythmics, some strange sounds and a minimal vocal (like for instance, "Tanzen ist schön", which means "To dance is nice", er...right), the whole is cut in about ten tracks that aren't very different one from the other. But, let's not forget that this wasn't done to think, and that if it sounds out-dated now, we'll have to go back to the context then: Delkom made dancefloor music, don't go looking for concepts or political or sociological messages. So the cult that surrounded this album has faded, the CD will find a nice place in your CD stand and will only emerge if a curious old DAF fan will ask for it, or in techno parties where the DJs will be delighted to play a record you would have brought them.
Frédéric Thébault |
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And Shall the Sky Descend
[Blight Records/Overcome]
"Stabbing the Sky from Dusk to Dawn", taken from the track The Birdies Wheel. Whatever the listener does, the impression he'll get will be grey, tenacious and messy. The black is too dull and smooth, too monolithic to qualify what's coming out of Dirge. Despite the heaviness of these four tracks (of one hour and a quarter long) of this third album, nothing is really frozen. Even if you'll be bewildered at the begining of the 23 minutes long eponymous track of And Shall the Sky Descend, by so much heaviness, but like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dirge always let lulls appear. Those are almost post-rock with strings or a sweet female voice (like on The Endless), and yet, they're paradoxically fearsome, because they always omen the come back of fearful and dank textures. From the buzz of an apparently harmless didgeridoo to the deployment of bass and guitars which become huge, dark and striking, the way seems to lead to a pandemonium already inhabited by Neurosis, the Swans or Kill The Thrill. And don't count on Marc T flayed vocal, nor on the sublime lyrics to cheer you up either. The time is for pain, dust and wandering into nothingness, as to better put forward the necessity for introspection. A vital experience overall.
Catherine Fagnot |
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Arroyo
[M-Tronic]
M-Tronic
[Duuster]
Coming from the generation of designers who compose, Displacer and Duuster share more than the fact they're produced by the same label, the famous factory of M-Tronic. Their latest respective albums seem to have undergone the same special treatment, the kind that generally applies to the industrial merchandise's conception. Let's simply translate; there are today some requirements for the IDM/electronica combo that Displacer and Duuster carry out perfectly. First, the aesthetics of the record's cover. At the worst, the elements to be included are medicine boxes' logotypes, or at the best, collages of seventies buildings' photographs. The artists usually get that well (their official websites show a taste for computer graphic and illustration work). The second point to assuage the electronica listener's request, is to use good old-fashioned hip-hop rhythmics inherited from the samples of James Brown's funky drummer, plated on evolutive tracks of icy synth. Displacer and Duuster are aware of the programmation and so, they achieve well their mission. In the whole, the sound is powerful, round, very balanced in a mix of nuances of digital and analogical textures, we can feel there, a mastery of the sound material which is common to the Funckarma family and Dither (who do remixes for the two albums). Unfortunately, the innovation isn't limited to ready recipes. A spark of genius is cruelly missing to these productions. They lack a little something which would spice up the whole and would offer an alternative to the old industrious' muzaks who still hesitate between whales' singing and sledgehammer for their friends' parties.
Anthony Augendre |
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Palookaville
[Epic]
Once again, it's going to be impossible to resist to Norman Cook's machine. Since the guy operates under the name of Fatboy Slim, his career has been faultless, from his very first appearance with the more than perfect "Better Living Through Chemistry" to the recent "Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars", with a more exacerbated ambition and which Weapon of Choice video clip with the perfect participation of Christopher Walken, has every chance to go to posterity. Norman Cook is a kind of highway bandit, a robber that manages to mix very precisely counterfeit and creation. The result is simply spectacular, and while the rumour stated that "Palookaville" would be a more hip-hop album, the actual result is more "rock". Maybe, is it linked with the presence of Damon Albarn (on Put It Back Together), unless it's one of its prestigious guests like Jack White of the Whites Stripes (on Slash Dot Dash), Lateef, of the band Quannum (who sings on two tracks), Bootsy Collins, Justin Robertson or Jonny Quality, a young band from Brighton. Whatever it is, "Palookaville" will delight the saddest among you.
Christophe Labussière |
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Blow
[Atmosphériques]
More than six years after its release in Belgium, Ghinzu's new album finally reaches us, this Belgian pop band is one of more promising of the moment (their first album was very noticed and was, inevitably, likened to the unavoidable dEUS). So, here's the chance, with this second album, to (re)discover the work of this band. "Blow" was given the perfect title, as it's somewhere between breeze and deflagration, between reserve and excess, pop subtlety and noisy-rock violence ( like on the first track Blow, a real instantaneous classic). We're always between epic songs (Dragster Wave, Cockpit Inferno), less subtle (Mine), crazy ('til You Faint) or sirupy (Sweet Love) moments. Despite the contrast between these very different ambiences, the band doesn't fritter away and manages to create a solid and coherent album, we impatiently wait to see on stage. Obviously, these Belgian know what they're doing.
Renaud Martin |
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A Page of Madness
[ITN Corporation]
In The Nursery have always been fascinated by silent movies from the 1920's, so that in 1995 they created a complete series dedicated to those films in order to offer them a new musical breath, almost vital. The fifth and latest volume of this parallel collection is the soundtrack for the Teinosuke Kinugasa's Japanese silent movie, 1927's "A Page of Madness". This movie coming from Japan is a gift for the famous Humberstone twins, who tame Japanese traditional instruments more for their edge and sharp sounds than for the melodies they can generate. That's how they've composed a record you cannot listen to inattentively, as every track offers a subtle mix of sweetness and chaos. Incarceration, spellbound and bare, is constructed around two rhythmic sequences that match perfectly. Reconcile allows you to breathe just before the well entitled Dancing With Chaos on which the composers chase for tortured sounds, like the ones they used on their very first productions. Some moments will remind of «Köda», and The Other Side of Reality is without any doubt one of their most soldierly track ever written: great and thrilling at the same time. This is the proof that after more than twenty years and a huge number of records released, the Humberstone brothers are still able to surprise and charm audiences. Fans of their rehab work will like this new record, less symphonic than the previous volumes, but by far the most rhythmic and abstracted one. The most intense too.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Florilegium
[Equilibrium]
Claudia Florio has a soprano voice like the ones opera female singer have, and she uses it in this pretentious way that we don't understand every time. Obviously inspired by the Italian opera, this band makes its music one music that's not always easy to listen to, made of a mix of paradoxes. As the voice dominates the instruments, and the non understandable lyrics quickly make this record a demonstration of vocals (Ouroboros). Let's acclaim the synthetics lines (Sub specie aeternitatis), though, in an universe dominated by a violin and a classical guitar playing oriental melodies. Bells ring in this album in order to remind that the time didn't really stop a few centuries ago (Axe). Surprisingly, the a capella cover of the traditional The Wind that Shakes the Barley finds a place here, though it was already covered by Dead Can Dance on "Into the Labyrinth": a very curious idea from a band that surely refers to Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard's band. This too long album will be recommended to the fans of the genre with the likes of Dwelling, Tristania or Am'ganesha'n, but will unfortunately seem boring to the others.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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La Increíble Aventura
[Acuarela]
We discovered Migala in 2000 with their superb cover of The Cure's Plainsong, recorded for the Spanish split single "Plainsong / The Figurehead" made with the band Sr. Chinarro. The albums released after that (distributed in France by the late Poplane) only confirmed the talent of this Spanish band and their so peculiar experimental rock: those of you who would like an attempt of description, must imagine the very charismatic voice of Abel Hernandez (between Nick Cave, Stuart Staples of the Tindersticks or Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap), set on a superb and unpredictable mix of atmospheric, melancholic, dark and even sometimes violent rock.
In this new album, this superb voice is only present on two tracks (Your Star, Strangled and El Gran Miercoles), as most tracks are instrumental. This choice is quite courageous when one's knows the quality of Hernandez band's songs. So, this is a wild and hot rock album the Spanish men composed here, an album where their sound, between two lulls, becomes literally epic for the first time (do try El Imperio del Mal, El Tigre que hay en ti, Tucson, Game Over or the final Lecciones de Vuelo con Mathias Rust). Here's a great adventurous record which will carry you far away, and it even goes with a DVD video containing a short film for each of the ten tracks in a limited edtition. What more could we ask?
Renaud Martin |
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Quiet City
[Kranky/Southern]
If, like us, you keep a moved memory of the Labradford's essentials, "A Stable Reference" and "Mi Media Naranja", you then probably know Pan American, the solo project of the singer/guitarist Mark Nelson, who releases now a magnificent fourth album. "Quiet City" resumes the electronic sound of the previous album ("The River Made No Sound", 2002), but it also merges some more acoustical instrumentations (strings, brass) which remind of Pan American's previous albums and Labradford's universe. The result consists in eight quite and magnificent audio and video ambient tracks, as the album goes with a DVD containing a video clips of each song made by the multimedia American artist, Annie Feldmeier. These films are made of wanderings in desert and melancholic urban landscapes which perfectly illustrate Mark Nelson's creations. The whole is a nice immersion experience.
Renaud Martin |
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Redra Ändra Endre De Fase
[Thisco]
"Redra Ändra Endre De Fase" is a conceptual album made of three tracks which durations vary between about eleven and thirty minutes. From the first audition, we quickly understand that we're dealing here with an irritating and slightly stressful record (with quotations from an old Chinese emperor in the booklet's notes). When the first track starts, the persistent sound of the electronic percussion close to the gamelan invades the acoustic space, punctuated with a feverish piano. We (fortunately) find there some pleasant moments, but after several minutes of ambient experimentation, we find the piano back on the second track and it becomes omnipresent, and even obsessing, on the third and last track, especially because of the use of the phasing process dear to Steve Reich (we're strongly reminded of his famous Piano Phase), a method which consists in repeating a musical structure by surimposing it with itself with a progressive lag. In short, this is much too long and redundant (it's useless to re-invent the repetitive music thirty years on without bringing anything new in it) and we wonder what's the label Thisco's plan with this incoherent and disparate editorial line.
Carole Jay |
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Apples and Synthesizers
[Ghostly International]
The fourth album of Solvent, "Apples and Synthesizers" isn't released on its own label Suction, nor on Morr Music like its predecessor, "Solvent City", but on Ghostly International, who released the EPs "Radio Gaga" pt. 1 and 2 at the begining of the year. We can find on this record the track My Radio (already present on these two EPs and on several compilations), on which Jason Amm declaims his nostalgia of the completed era when he still could hear on radio the electro-pop music he loves so. But, never mind, if you want things done right, you should do them yourself, and this analog synthesizer fetishist, as he defines himself, does so on this new album. More than ever, he perpetuates there his retrospective exploration of the synthetical music of the Rubik's cube period, but this time he's obviously leering at the pop music. The melodies are catchy, the vocal, which appears on several tracks, is grinded by a vocoder, but if Jason Amm uses all the codes of the 80s synthpop to create his songs, the latter are nevertheless too elaborated to date from that time. Yet, we can't fail to see a willingly anachronistic tendency in Solvent, from the frankly ugly cover inspired by the constructivism and which design evokes "The Man-Machine" of Kraftwerk, to the last track, Steve Strange (already heard on the compilation "Snow Robots 1"), which reminds that in the past, the Canadian had already entitled one of his track Basildon... A good current record of vintage pop.
Carole Jay |
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A Leopard and Other Stories
[Hitback]
We like the young Englishmen of Spearmint very much. They're one of the last band who does what we call britpop, in the more Blur-like tradition of it, and they already released some nice (although a bit daft) albums, like the recent "My Missing Days" (2003). Now, they're releasing "A Leopard and Other Stories", a record which is an album and a compilation at the same time, because it contains tracks that were originally written for EPs and diverse compilations (so, you can find This Is a Souvenir, a track they recorded for a tribute to Pavement). Altogether, the whole is catchy and crafty, it's also got some more adventurous and original tracks than usual (like the nice A Lepopard, The Beautiful Things, Death of a Scene or the very good single The Whole Summer Long), and this compilation turns to be the more interesting thing these Englishmen did. It's essential if you already liked the album "My Missing Days", and it's to be discovered if you still like British pop.
Renaud Martin |
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White2
[Southern Records]
Sunn O))) or the art of inertia. Three long monotonous and monolithic songs, a series of steps towards the always more abyssal depth, that would be a good description of the fifth album of the duo O'Malley (Lotus Eaters) / Anderson (Goatsnake). A dizzy dive in troubled waters which acoustic structure is only but heavy buzzes of guitars, some abstract arpeggios and some nauseous industrial frequencies. With no rhythm to get a grip on, this album quickly resembles a terrifying leaden desert, which rare edges would have been meticulously erased by metallic frictions, taken away by a storm undetectable to the human ear, but which is omnipresent on the sixty minutes of "White2". As for the shamanic incantations of the hypnotical Decay2 (Nihils' Maw), they're the only trace of life in this sub-lunar trip that is as proving as fascinating. A strange mix of noise, doom and dark ambient, which could make of this fifth album, the missing link between Earth and Deutsch Nepal.
Stéphane Leguay |
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Consolidated Green
[Boredom Product]
"Consolidated Green" is Thee Hyphen's fourth album. Although it's been announced as Member U-0176's (formerly of Celluloide) side-project debut solo effort, this is his first official album, following three CDR records. As rectilinear as his mixed band's records, this record never scatters, playing mechanical tracks like we fuse integrated circuits on a PC master card. This solo project's compositions aren't that far from Celluloide's, excepted for the obvious sex change behind the mic. It's hard to know who's copying who (Darkleti or Member U-0176?) when robots-like intonations are close to each other's and match simple melodies. Coldness is the master word even on the sleeve pictures, like the ones for 1994's "Incidental Tools of Confusion", and remind us of electricity courses and oscilloscopes, as well as the golden age of the first monochromes computers. With faith, we'll find similarities between the mysterious Member U-0176's voice and Dave Gahan's during his eighties era (Methods of Lies), and before the excess we all know of. Claiming this reference to the first half of the electronic music of the 80s, sounds from Collapse remind of the Basildon four's Fools, and sound like some kind of Depeche Mode Vince Clarke wouldn't have ever left. Less dull than 1998's "Organique", "Consolidated Green" is where we expected it to be: waiting at the green traffic light, between some light EBM (Industrial Suicide) and some cold synth-pop music (Hear the Noise).
Bertrand Hamonou |
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The Three Cold Men
[SSI/Soulfood]
We already knew that Franz Lopez and his band Opera Multi Steel had found in Brazil the recognition that France always denied them. It was a near thing that this particular band from the Bourges region give up, but that was without reckoning their tenacity and this unexpected shudder happened beyond the Atlantic. Today, after temporarily (we hope) putting his main project aside, Franz reappears with The Three Cold Men, surrounded of Alex Twin (Individual Industry) and Maurizio Bonito (Volv Uncion). Of course, we can find the ambiences of our favourite band (we only regret the absence of his former partners' voices), but the musical dressing fancies itself more modern with its rather synthpop electronic sounds. The Three Cold Men offers us a nice series of pop gems with this homogeneous album which ends on an amazing cover of Visage's Fade to Grey that makes us realise that the charm, the coldness and the melody created by Steve Strange 25 years ago are surprisingly close to those of Franz Lopez's and his new project, auto-labelled "retro wave" reminds how he knows to position himself out of time.
Christophe Labussière |
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Troissoeur
[EMI]
Four years after their first CD entitled "Trah Njim", Troissoeur deliver their second album which should be a masterpiece. Nevertheless, the name of the band sounds like a bad joke, when we learn that this group from Belgium is composed of the three Vanvinckenroye brothers, among which the eldest, Rein, also collaborated with Male Or Female. But only one listening of this sumptuous self-titled album will show that the sense of humour has no place in the group's suffocating universe. Produced by Daniel B. (Front 242 and Male Or Female) who does a complete acoustic work, Troisoeur immediately captivates with its exclusive ambiances. In fact, we've seldom been given the chance to penetrate such a gloomy world lighted with candles, where such a distressed chant resonates. Cucoon and Kjilmé are models of powerful choruses, between hopeless shouts and condemnation. "Protect me against the big bad world" whispers an almost surreal female voice at the end of Little Dole: terror is touchable on this record where the loops and the sampler are laid in the background. Everything here makes that record the perfect environment for an imaginary apocalyptic world, from the fragility of Higher Motions and Trays to the ritual chant of Sano m'ame, in a language that's the reverse of ours. Their style is said to be "acoustic ambient pop", but this music comes from a world where darkness won't easily leave its place to the pop's sunlight we all know. You're warned.
Bertrand Hamonou |
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Nuit Blanche
[V2]
Inevitably, anybody listening for the first time to a Vive La Fête's track think it's a joke: with this naive and listless female voice, these simple lyrics and this caricature of the 80s dancing electro, we have to admit that this recipe might make you grin. But, little by little, throughout the auditions, we realise that the lyrics aren't as nice as they seem, and that they evoke with acidity and malice little moments of life, like those parties that end in disaster or our failing love lives. Then, we surprise ourselves wanting to dance, even if the electro part, we thought was a bit cheap at the begining, is finally quite good at times. We end up listening non-stop to tracks like Nuit Blanche, Maquillage or the very dark and very intense Noir Désir, the real climax of this record. Basically, that's how you'll become addictive to this trash-chic duo made of the ex-dEUS Danny Mommens and the well rounded ex-model Els Pynoo. Let's also mention that this third album was slightly changed for its late French release: we've got a beautiful cover-sleeve, but the tracklisting has been curtailed, and the tasty track Touche pas is missing.
Renaud Martin |
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Sorry I Make You Lush
[Ninja tune]
Wagon Christ is one of the numerous avatars of the Cornishman Luke Vibert, the Siamese brother of Mike Paradinas and Richard D. James. There, where his colleagues flirt with dark aspects of the youth's dance music, Luke prefers playing with old analogical machines cooking up perky and deliciously washed up atmospheres. "Sorry I Make You Lush" is a real tribute to synths that go "quack-quack" and "oink-oink" such as Jean-Jacques Perrey and Raymond Scott staged them in the Seventies. Don't be mistaken on the artist's intentions, the aim isn't to adopt the easy-listening genre to tease his public. Wagon Christ really likes cartoons' credits music, radios' jingles, supermarkets' advertisements and news programs' illustrations. Actually, Luke collects his musical stamps like other collect cheeses' boxes. His diversion is a bit like the philosophy of Andy Warhol's pop art. Some tracks of the album manage to move us, like if we only discovered now the melancholic character of the bass on La Danse des canards. Plone, a pre-eminently Moog group, would probably the only musical project close to this fresh and funny record.
Anthony Augendre |
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To start with, let's talk of the latest three releases of the label Frozen Empire Media.
First, Antigen Shift, who is one of these musicians that aren't original enough to draw the attention, but who are also thorough enough to cause a minimum of interest. With "Next to Departed", the Canadian proves he's not only another rhythmic noise clone, especially with the contribution of varied elements in his music, but these ingredients still are clichés that aren't revolutionary: distorted filtered remote voices, saturated rhythmics, dark tracks, ethnic chants... The strong point of Nick Theriault dwells in his ability to arrange these elements together.
What could we say of "Prelude to Annihilation", the first album of Red Reflection, except that it sails on the same austere deleterious waters, but with a more "orchestral" side to it (piano and strings galore), it's also really less rhythmic and very cinema orientated: the general atmosphere of this album would perfectly go with the movie soundtrack of any disturbing, or disturbed films (Grandrieux? Aronofsky?). It's beautiful, dark, pleasant, ageless, not very innovating either, but ideal to relax at home while meditating on the universe's curve.
As for "At the Train Station on a Saturday Evening" of Totakeke, we would like to say it's more original than the others, but it starts rather badly with a first track made in the old school industrial tradition, fortunately spruced up by some welcomed micro sounds. Already known under the names of Ativ and, above all, Synth-etik (who released several records on Hands, and that we already noticed on the compilation "Micro_Superstarz 2000" with a very playful track), Frank Mokros tries with this new project to unveil a more appeased facet of his personality, and in the end, he reveals his potential on his last track, with a minimal, simple and efficient mix of piano, micro sounds and an obsessing rhythmics.
Now then, let's deviate in the salutary world of compilations with Amµnition, the new collection of varied tracks from Planet Mu, which is released shortly after "Children of Mu" (another recent compilation of the label), probably because of planning delays. So, we can find some common tracks in the two records, fortunately, they make up for it with several exclusivities (Venetian Snares, Shitmat, The Gasman, Lexaunculpt and Ambulance) and the whole is mixed by Mike Paradinas himself. The plan was to make a cheap and representative sampler of the label, it's a success, even if it's a bit difficult to enjoy all the styles present here.
Same goal and same findings for Tempo Technik Teamwork, the new compilation of Staubgold, because going in all directions seem to be the leitmotiv of this German label. Capable of the best (AGF, The Kat Cosm, Rand and Holland, Paul Wirkus...) and the worst, it's difficult, and even impossible, to completely accept the whole Staubgold catalogue, which is more and more receding from his electronic bases. Nevertheless, the main idea still is experimentation, and we've got our money's worth of it. This double CD will allow you to get the feel of this label, but it'll be to your own risks, because if "Amµnition" will make you skip, "Tempo Technik Teamwork" will surely calm you down. For the fans only.
Carole Jay
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