My Review: Desperate Journalist - No Hero

Desperate Journalist - No Hero

There are veiled scratches of nostalgia in the crowded lanes of London, a city that has once again come to dominate the scene in this 2024, which swagger through a precise documentation of pop toxins in copious doses, to make up for the time. And this band, in its fifth work, succeeds in its personal descriptive summit to complete a long journey, approaching an increasingly noir style in a graceful way but with the accuracy to deviate to new places, making important use of keyboards and synthesisers, with lyrics that make it clear that if there is a place where music can be heard and seen with these compositions, everything is hooked with extreme precision.

The range, colourful, polite, soft, towards genres that derive from old presences, with high-sounding names to act as guarantors (The Cure, The Cranberries, Saint Etienne, Black Box Recorder in the first instance), is just a cue, an excuse, a strategic move, a mackintosh in the Soho district to tickle, unfairly, any attempt at comparison and classification.

Instead, the four pirates of the mood are intent on making notes an abacus to be placed in the discomfort of the weathering of the senses, with that drama that overrides any possible alignment and coupling on our part: there is no place in this character outpost for an identity that is finalised in understanding.

Rob Hardy’s Les Paul is a pyrotechnic synthesis of jingle jungle fragments, of dream pop effusions, with a post-punk catharsis held beautifully centred more on the perpendicularity of the sound than on its curves.

And it is ecstasy, a joy that also rises up thanks to Caroline Helbert (call her Caz, please), a drummer lent to the beauty of wandering clouds with her constant strategies to make, of rhythm, a rush often aided by patterns that seem unashamedly intense. Simon Drowner plays bass as if invited to take responsibility for shaping the gravitational lanes of Jo Bevan, the best interpreter of noir pop today, without a doubt. 

The apparent detachment from previous productions is remarkable: each track seems like an episode in itself, such a unique act of presence that, in no way forced, once the others gravitate around it, everything makes sense. No concept, but rather an anchoring of artistic necessity to a melodic performance that allows for recalls, lurks and a great desire for isolation, between dances and perpetual reflections.

The solos, for example, are incorporated to emphasise the mood, its sorrowful pouring, its fragrance within an alchemical presence of the dream factor, a constant in the London band since time immemorial, but which in this record really seems to tear the tears from our chests.

Whispers, vibrations between rhythmic and arpeggiated electric guitars are assembled in the thin cylinder of a tight grip caused by the skilful use of electronics.

One travels through alternative, post-punk, post-rock, dream pop and even drops of psychedelia to progressive. All this happens while the catchy, easy-going side (to wit: the choruses) is all hopelessly sexy and bloated with fertile redundancies of joy.

But there really is no denying how listening costs commitment, with the digestion of certain moments making us make a pleasurable effort: the artists do not give in, they do not let themselves be beguiled even by their own intentions before going into the studio. Yes to pop but with refined respect for their past, for the miles and hours travelled to cross their eyes with our emotions.

Note how the sound, clean and direct, contrasts with the drumming, sophisticated, sometimes jazzy, in a circuit of influences that tend to affect the complexity, giving a necessary study.

The evocative power of the lyrics now experiences an unbreakable marriage with Jo: this voice is truly capable of doing what Björk and Dolores O'Riordan attempted to accomplish in the 1990s. She manages to turn around the meaning by modulating and flirting often with slight changes in register, always coming across as credible even before the words settle into our understanding, as if she knew how to precede us and our diary of notes.

Chorality, emphasis, drama, tension and an avalanche of scratches come out of its mouth with the music trying to act as a clip, failing (in the benevolent sense of the expression), and being skilful, instead, in making us realise how much more cohesive the four of them are than other more well-known and admired bands.

The themes described and the mode seem to come from a past that has a magnifying glass on what is to come: the most dramatic part of these compositions sounds like a sad party while fireworks go wild in the sky...

A resounding work for integrity, for an identity that does not have the visa for success, given the ignorance of the masses, but which makes their work an oscar to artistic merit...

Now it's time to delve into this record, song by song, to reap the amazement and give it its rightful sceptre...

Song by Song

1 - Adah

The guitars of The Cure's Seventeen Seconds open the dances, while angel Jo's voice prefers to hijack and wedge itself into the dimension of a windstorm with its rises and falls. A biblical compactness surrounds the few notes of synth and Rob Hardy’s six-string, which also passes by Johnny Marr's parts. Tense, nervous, with a venomous edge that takes your breath away....

2 - No Hero

Once upon a time there was C-86, then Dream pop, and there were atmospheres that involved fast trains to get to the refrains with exuberance. And that's what happens here, with the vocals stretching the words as Caz Helbert's drumming knows how to frustrate her companions on this truly melancholic journey. The guitar in the finale takes us back to the Au Pairs and the Cranberries, in an unexpected and calamitous union...

3 - Afraid

Simon Drowner is an angelic-fingered bass player, capable of holding up a melodic line until it becomes the lane on which Caz and Rob build a jewel of nineties sentiment, then descending into a marvellous drama with the piano outlining a regret gathered in an almost mute dance

4 - Comfort

Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and Yazoo: three old entities are recalled in this track, with their pop movements, and the feeling that the electronic side is warmer than a ballad... A slow but inexorable progression towards the refrain, where everything comes together in a simultaneity unimaginable at the beginning. 

5 - Silent 

The gem, the superstar, the queen of hearts who goes out and makes havoc for the world: when decadence seeks silence, here come these notes in which the guitar hints at revisiting sublime moments of 4AD, only to move away and seek a softer focus. The singing is a work of art, between vibratos and tense strings, swollen with hallucinating condensates of truth, destroying all illusions. Sad as only pop can be, this gem also offers a keyboard full of blood and guitars close to the Alan Parson Project, to make a perfect musical circle...

6 - Underwater 

The most laboured moment, the artistic spark that ignites the sense, the gravity, the magnificence, shows itself with this impetus where everything seems syncopated, electric, unavailable to a pleasant conversion. Hints of post-punk guitars searching for shade, in the splendidly toxic sea of this electronic base that, with an industrial pattern, enhances the atypicality of this episode compared to the others. 

7 - 7

Dream pop within horror, in a vitaminic mirror with grey tones, in which The Cranberries sound like the grandchildren of attempted approaches, while Echobelly trace the power and robustness of a truly impervious but exhilarating harmonic skeleton

8 - Unsympathetic Parts 1 & 2

The longest track on the album is a light and dark flash, an incredible and joyful nonsense within an emotional circuit that seeks and finds dilations and changes, to arrive in the vicinity of a delirium where the refrain is a decadent algebraic scanned breath of great volume and intensity. Then everything goes back to being fog in Trafalgar Square, on a rainy day....

9 - You Say You are Lonely

The debut album seems to remind us of where these now grown-up foursome come from, never conceding to the stylistic imprint: a hinted atmosphere, in which the vocals act as the initial helmsman, to make us abandon ourselves to the unique note of a piano truly drunk with dark light, and then we die in this fertile beauty that finds a refrain so far removed from the present day…

10 - Consolation Prize 

Serious bands always put their best moment at the last act: if a farewell must exist, let it be great...

Consolation Prize is the blink of Big Country in guitars and Chameleons, the melodic line is a direct ovation to the faux-cheerful Cure, with the vocals reminding us closely of the lead singer of a band much loved by Robert Smith,  All About Eve ...

Mysterious, scratchy, it finds the ability in the chorus to be devastating as the handkerchief fills with holy water, thanks to the subtle no wave apex that clings to more flashy early eighties pop methods ...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

9th October 2024

https://desperatejournalist.bandcamp.com/album/no-hero

La mia Recensione: Desperate Journalist - No Hero

 Desperate Journalist - No Hero

Ci sono graffi velati di nostalgia nelle corsie affollate di Londra, città che è tornata a dominare la scena in questo 2024, che in modo spavaldo si espandono attraverso una precisa documentazione che prevede tossine pop in dosi abbondanti, per recuperare il tempo. E questa band, al suo quinto lavoro, riesce nel suo personale vertice descrittivo a completare un lungo percorso, approcciandosi in modo garbato a uno stile sempre più noir ma con l’accuratezza di deviare in nuovi posti, facendo un uso importante di tastiere e sintetizzatori, con testi in grado di far comprendere che, se esiste un luogo dove la musica può essere ascoltata e vista con queste composizioni, tutto viene agganciato con estrema precisione. Il raggio di azione, variopinto, educato, morbido, nei confronti di generi che derivano da antiche presenze, con nomi altisonanti a fare da garanti (The Cure, Cranberries, Saint Etienne, Black Box Recorder in primis), è solo uno spunto, una scusa, una mossa strategica, un impermeabile nel quartiere di Soho per solleticare, ingiustamente, ogni tentativo di comparazione e classificazione.

I quattro pirati dell’umore sono invece intenti a fare delle note un pallottoliere da mettere nel disagio delle intemperie dei sensi, con quella drammaticità che scavalca ogni possibile allineamento e agganciamento da parte nostra: non c’è posto in questo avamposto caratteriale per una identità che si finalizzi nella comprensione.

La Les Paul di Rob Hardy è una sintesi pirotecnica di frammenti jingle jungle, di effusioni dream pop, con una catarsi post-punk tenuta splendidamente centrata più sulla perpendicolarità del suono che non sulle sue curve. Ed è estasi, una gioia che si alza in piedi anche grazie a Caroline Helbert (chiamatela Caz, per cortesia), una batterista prestata alla bellezza delle nuvole vaganti con le sue strategie continue per fare, del ritmo, una corsa spesso aiutata da patterns che sembrano intensi in modo spudorato. Simon Drowner suona il basso come se fosse invitato a prendersi la responsabilità di dare una forma grassa alle corsie gravitazionali di Jo Bevan, la miglior interprete del noir pop al giorno d’oggi, senza alcun dubbio. 

Notevole l’apparente distacco dalle produzioni precedenti: ogni brano sembra un episodio a sé, un atto talmente unico di presenza, che, in modo per nulla forzato, una volta che gli altri gli gravitano attorno, tutto prende senso. Nessun concept bensì un ancorare la necessità artistica a una esibizione melodica che consenta richiami, appostamenti e una gran voglia di isolamento, tra danze e riflessioni perpetue.

Gli assoli, per esempio, sono inglobati per sottolineare l’umore, il suo versamento doloroso, la sua fragranza dentro un’alchemica presenza del fattore onirico, costante da sempre nella band londinese, ma che in questo disco sembra davvero strappare le lacrime dal nostro petto. 

Sussurri, vibrazioni tra chitarre elettriche ritmiche e arpeggiate si trovano assembrate nel cilindro, sottile, di una morsa stretta causata dall’uso sapiente di elettronica, che, alla fine dell’ascolto, riesce a ottenere un sottile effetto.

Si viaggia con l’alternative, il post-punk, il post-rock, il dream pop e anche gocce di psichedelia sino a giungere persino al progressive. Tutto ciò accade mentre il lato orecchiabile, di facile presa (per intenderci: i ritornelli) è tutto irrimediabilmente sexy e gonfio di ridondanze fertili di gioia.

Ma davvero non si può negare come l’ascolto costi impegno, con la digestione di alcuni momenti che ci fa compiere un piacevole sforzo: gli artisti non cedono, non si fanno abbindolare nemmeno dalle loro stesse intenzioni prima di scendere in studio. Sì al pop ma con raffinato rispetto nei confronti del loro passato, delle miglia e ore percorse per incrociare lo sguardo con le nostre emozioni.

Da notare come il suono, pulito e diretto, sia in contrasto con il drumming, sofisticato, talvolta jazzato, in un circuito di affluenze che tendono a incidere sulla complessità, regalando un necessario studio.

La potenza evocativa dei testi ora vive un matrimonio inossidabile con Jo: questa voce è capace per davvero di fare ciò che negli anni novanta avevano tentato di compiere Björk e Dolores O’Riordan. Lei riesce a girare attorno al senso modulando e flirtando spesso con leggeri cambi di registro, risultando sempre credibile ancora prima che le parole si depositino nella nostra comprensione, come se sapesse precedere noi e il nostro diario di appunti.

Coralità, enfasi, dramma, tensione e una valanga di graffi escono dalla sua bocca con la musica che tenta di fare da fermaglio, fallendo (nel senso benevolo dell’espressione), e risultando abile, invece, nel farci intendere quanto i quattri siano coesi molto di più rispetto ad altre band più note e ammirate.

I temi descritti e la modalità paiono giungere da un passato che ha una lente di ingrandimento su ciò che accadrà: la parte più drammatica di queste composizioni sembra un party triste mentre i fuochi d’artificio impazzano nel cielo…

Un lavoro clamoroso per integrità, per una identità che non ha il visto per il successo, data l’ignoranza della massa, ma che rende il loro operato un oscar al merito artistico…

Ora è tempo di addentrarci in questo disco, canzone per canzone, per raccogliere lo stupore e dargli il giusto scettro…

Song by Song

1 - Adah

Le chitarre di Seventeen Seconds dei Cure aprono le danze, mentre la voce dell’angelo Jo preferisce dirottare e incunearsi nella dimensione di una tempesta di vento con le sue ascese e discese. Una compattezza biblica circonda le poche note del synth e della sei corde di Rob Hardy che passa anche dalle parti di Johnny Marr. Tesa, nervosa, con una velenosa impronta che toglie il fiato…

2 -  No Hero

C’era una volta il C-86, poi Dream pop, e vi erano atmosfere che prevedevano treni veloci per poter arrivare ai ritornelli con esuberanza. Ed è quello che accade qui, con la voce che allunga le parole come il drumming di Caz Helbert che sa come frustrare i compagni di questo viaggio davvero malinconico. La chitarra nel finale ci riporta agli Au Pairs e ai Cranberries, in una unione imprevista e calamitosa…

3 - Afraid

Simon Drowner è un bassista dalle dita angeliche, in grado di tenere in piedi un tratto melodico, sino a farlo divenire la corsia su cui Caz e Rob costruiscono un gioiello dai sentimenti anni novanta, per poi scendere in un dramma meraviglioso con il pianoforte che tratteggia un dispiacimento raccolto in una danza quasi muta…

4 - Comfort

Pet Shop Boys, Erasure e Yazoo: tre vecchie entità vengono ricordate in questo brano, con i loro movimenti pop, e la sensazione che il lato elettronico sia più caloroso di una ballad… Una progressione lenta ma inesorabile verso il ritornello, dove tutto si compatta in una contemporaneità inimmaginabile all’inizio. 

5 - Silent 

La chicca, la superstar, la regina di cuori che esce e fa stragi per il mondo: quando la decadenza cerca il silenzio ecco uscire queste note in cui la chitarra accenna a rivisitare momenti eccelsi della 4AD, per poi allontanarsi e cercare un fuoco più morbido. Il cantato è un'opera d’arte, tra vibrati e corde tese, gonfie di allucinanti condensati di verità, che distruggono ogni illusione. Triste come solo il pop sa essere, questa perla offre anche una tastiera piena di sangue e chitarre vicine agli Alan Parson Project, per fare un perfetto girotondo musicale…

6 - Underwater 

Il momento più laborioso, la scintilla artistica che accende il senso, la gravità, la magnificenza, si mostra con questo impeto dove tutto sembra sincopato, elettrico, non disponibile a una conversione piacevole. Accenni di chitarre post-punk che cercano l’ombra, nel mare splendidamente tossico di questa base elettronica che, con un pattern industriale, esalta l'atipicità di questo episodio rispetto agli altri. 

7 - 7

Il Dream pop dentro l’horror, in uno specchio vitaminico con sfumature grigie, in cui i Cranberries sembrano i nipoti di tentativi di approccio, mentre gli Echobelly tracciano la potenza e la robustezza di uno scheletro armonico davvero impervio ma esaltante…

8 - Unsympathetic Parts 1 & 2

Il brano più lungo dell’album è un lampo chiaro e scuro, un incredibile e gioioso nonsense all’interno di un circuito emozionale che cerca e trova dilatazioni e cambiamenti, per giungere nei pressi di un delirio dove il ritornello è un decadente soffio algebrico scandito, di grandi volumi e intensità. Poi tutto torna a essere nebbia in Trafalgar Square, in un giorno di pioggia…

9 - You Say You are Lonely

L’album di debutto sembra ricordarci la provenienza di questi ragazzi ormai adulti mai concessisi alla resa dell’impronta stilistica: un’atmosfera accennata, in cui la voce fa da timoniere iniziale, per farci abbandonare alla nota unica di un pianoforte davvero ebbro di cupa luce, e poi si muore in questa bellezza fertile che trova un ritornello così lontano dai giorni nostri…

10 - Consolation Prize 

Le band serie mettono sempre il momento migliore all'ultimo atto: se un commiato deve esistere che sia grandioso…

Consolation Prize è il battito di ciglia dei Big Country nelle chitarre e dei Chameleons, la linea melodica è un’ovazione diretta ai Cure fintamente allegri, con la voce che ci ricorda da vicino la cantante di una band molto amata da Robert Smith, gli All About Eve …

Misteriosa, graffiante, trova la capacità nel ritornello di essere devastante mentre il fazzoletto si riempie di acqua santa, grazie al sottile vertice no wave che si appiccica a più vistose metodiche pop dei primi anni Ottanta…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

9 Ottobre 2024

https://desperatejournalist.bandcamp.com/album/no-hero

My Review: Iamnoone - The Joy Of Sorrow

Iamnoone - The Joy Of Sorrow

Whether it is confusion or clarity that generates an oxymoron such as the title of this album is not known and perhaps it is better: with such doubt turbulent skies full of dancing, with salt on the wounds as mischievous smiles spread and go, nomadic and unhappy, on a dance hall where hypnosis is the Italian duo's trademark, although many things have changed (for the better) to make these twelve compositions a farewell to the past and a wet embrace of the future.

Philippe and Seth reveal an osmosis that astounds, with a compactness that cannot fail to go viral when one has the illusion that their ‘old’ beauty and depth is still evident.

But there is no doubt that the propensity is to create a circle of sonic desirability that knows how to be a gentle invocation to share these truly intense pearls, which fly in the meanders of a turbulence educated by an intelligent use of electronics, in which the guitars seem to have disappeared and massive doses of harmony are encountered that nourishes the joy of pain...

The freshness, the hypotheses elaborated in the minds of the two, the blackish incendiary instincts, the pleasant toxicity of pressing rhythms, the lyrics that scrutinise and hold back, stacks of granitic motions to pick up the corpse of musical genres now consolidated by precariousness and an increasingly minimal sense of resistance, make all this something necessary.

Iamnoone become a pair of volatile dinosaurs, and specifically two argentavis magnificens, capable of grabbing the corpses of our brains and bringing them into the atrium of their artistic work in the South American mountains, for an alcoholic and robust mass, with rituals that make the soul sweat and the emotions stir. Darkness found itself inevitably changed: the band does not intend to give advice but, as wise art should, lights a candle on the debris and sows doubts, invites us to follow this dancing ship into trajectories that turn time into a frightened spinning top, with class.

Musically, it is often on the side of an ebm that is never exaggerated, with ancient coldwave flows that make the whole thing yet another forced yet perfectly oiled marriage.

As for the singing, it becomes more melodic, cadenced, and vibrant, with, in addition, the ability to better juggle vocal registers.

But then there is the undeniable feeling of a lethal study of the shrunken dust that has become thoughts, with loneliness and sadness united in a spring dress without a zip, with the desire to bounce through truly magnetic synths these two elements increasingly linked to inevitable decline.

The Eighties fall before this intellectual progression.

The useless sounds of the Nineties are put on the bench.

The topics of the last two decades remain, but the mode of expression changes, deviates and moves swiftly towards the removal and annihilation of those heavy chains that were imitation and the inability to generate fresh air in the groove.

Can one be fresh with death painted in the notes? If you wrote this record, certainly: and it is amazement welded with rays that smell of heavy metal.

Short introductions, the essential body of the tracks quickly identified and then off with nuances, dry arrangements and the sense of rush that never leaves us, which make this work a cloud not yet able to be considered toxic but certainly dangerous: there are many people who fear dark beauty and here they will not get a moment's respite. 

One feels the pleasantness of the presence that is not merely descriptive of a recent past, as, as the listening continues, one imagines the whole thing being born in that very instant and in doing so we find ourselves before the miracle of self-judgment.

The Joy Of Sorrow becomes a mystery that seeks an interview, an increasingly rigged dice game of an impudent and vibrant pyramid, with Sin being invited by the two to throw down the aces. Those of the musicians are full of mathematics and an incandescent pentacle, adept at directing the gaze towards its five points and placing themselves in the twelve tracks, to cover them with magic and a dense atmosphere.

Relationships, time, space, and intellectual magnets that seem to be uncompromisingly expendable, make for radiant listening, even if there is no doubt that the echoes that dwell in the head will vibrate those who hold our destiny in their hands.

It is essential to give prominence to the refrains that often reveal Seth's concentric imagination, faithful in its power and ability to give melodic traits a heightened and propulsive sense: his bass is a treatise on chemistry applied to Philippe's melodic fantasy, to meet in the ballroom of a party where lonely souls weep and dance to the sound of these songs, to immerse truth within the denial of a future and where, incidentally, nihilism has nothing to do with it.

Faithful to Andreas and Suzy Herrmann's Cold Transmission as in a pact in which mutual esteem flows into a party in the German black forest, this combo transfers the Italian film made of sweat and disenchantment inside the proverbial Germanic pragmatic sense, to generate an unhappy happening in a delightful way, with the aggravation of songs that will remain warriors in time, precisely in this one that seems to prefer fall and incapacity. 

Everything is a corrupted echo, the senses put to the bar full of plastic and busy transistors, the rhythm that allows no pause and the music is a blueberry factory that settles on the lips of these compositions, in a sensual manifesto that makes eroticity a pleasant ordeal.

Fertile, galvanised by their trajectories on the candelabra of a clandestine day, they magnetise the now sterile post-punk with saline solutions that give that blackish brio by which they have always been fascinated. On this album they transform the potential into an elaborate scene where Fura dels Baus performs with them in holding back the darkness and turning it into a new stone to be thrown from the centre of the stage.

Powerful, winking, seductive, the last act of this sphere seeks chalk claws, with their attention turned to the perimeter where they sit solutions to be activated: they do it brilliantly, forging character with these conversations that salivate and spit out life to be consumed with simplicity, casting a paradoxical fear on them as, for real, one should not be fooled by the luminous games of these keyboards, because the best joke is disguised as misleading simplicity

Now let us dance and descend to the slippery floor to sip absinthe and Fernet Branca...

Song by Song

1 - In Fear

The stuttering, unstoppable Fear is the one to whom the two have given the task of opening the rainbow of uprisings: a gentle farewell from their outstanding Together Alone of 2023, to grant the illusion that their path would be similar. But no. Just listen to how the track's progression leads to a faux-sunny opening, as never before...

2 - This Is Forever

The old Clock Dva and Front 242 might whisper the opening pattern, but then it's flight, progression, a pressing of life with an eternity that leans on the lapidary bass and the vertigo of wisely circular electronics, while the voice seems to enunciate and preside over the decline of loss, which is nothing but the characteristic of this actuality destined to live in dying eternity...

3 - This, Fourth And Fifth

Partially neurotic, pulsating and magnetic, in reality this track lives above Olympus, in a day in which the old guitar seems to pop out to then allow Seth's fingers to be those of a merciless blacksmith. 

4 - MFM

Think of Kraftwerk as infants, simple and dreamy: take them to a clearing with a modern computer and the old Italian melodic genuflection, and here is this cancer on the neck looking for a break, without finding it: everything is a pressing march, an agitated whisper that shakes the soul in the night without lights...

5 - Soulless

The experimentation continues, the one that precedes the actual song: it is a feverish symptom, it is splitting, shaking and then becoming a magnet. Ancient hints of Giorgio Moroder and Cher in the musical part come forward and then it's a crossbow in the refrain, with notes like mental precipices, where the melody proves capable of connecting the Seventies and the present day.

6 - Ask The Wind

Bringing together a piano, a breath of wind and a sabre-rattling bass that Hooky's old fogey couldn't reproduce any more is a killer indeed, then a satin robe descends and crosses the air with Philippe's singing that hides the secret of its elegance very well as it seems to suggest questions rather than determine beauty with the decadent sound that lives in his torn uvula

7 - The Age Of Sadness

When the two insist on looping, in the adjacent areas of the arrangement this temple of enchantments and traps comes to life, one ends up whistling the polemical flow of sadness, which has become a boulder. But the ballistic prowess lies in the opening verses that push the mind to focus, to make interpretation something useless: better to travel in the images of these magnetic sounds, to use the lyrics as a truthful mirror of the dirty game of existence. 

8 - Fever

They take us by the hand with Italian disco-dance fragments from the Eighties, then put them in oil and wait for the sprouts of this keyboard that traces pins so dear to Orchestra Manoeuvres in The Dark. You fly, you stop in the clouds, and then it's beating cadence, it's totally feverish nocturnal seduction...

9 - The Labyrinth Is In My Mind

Here they are, the two from the early days, generous wizards inside bloody needles and threads: the darkest track is the only moment in which the old steps seem to rise again. Pure illusion: the bass with its martial procedure is enough to show how the past is a window to which they no longer look. The feeling remains, however, that like an affectionate encyclopaedia everything can still be studied and proposed, with some exciting mutation...

10 - 99 Angels

An opening song that could also close it, and that fortifies the fluid movements of dark textures, 99 Angels is the stroke of genius simplified: a bone structure well turned by ebm petals manages to devastate adjacent musical genres to become the mirror of what Iamnoone are today...

11 - Purity

Romanian-German songwriter Michael Cretu appears, playing with synths, but the two Italians suspend the notes to bring them back in movement, subtle and simple, in the refrain, with the vocal part blessing what resists wrapped in a white cloak...

12 - Pain

The unexpected becomes an act of glory, a subject of study and a remarkable force: Pain is the future of a musical past that is now nailed under the dust. Iamnoone revitalise, lubricate that period when food and drink were found in a few notes. Inclined to an artificial insemination of the time that was, it becomes a magnetic, reddish, truly unpredictable leave-taking, to allow joy to give pain the right measure of tireless punishment…

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

2nd October 2024

Iamnoone:

Philippe Marlat

Seth Dagodeus 

Music Label:

Cold Transmission

https://iamnoone1.bandcamp.com/album/the-joy-of-sorrow