April 2006

.Anna Oxygen : This is an Exrcice (KRS).
You are now entering the extraordinarly strange world of Anna Oxygen.
Deliciously 80s, simply new wave, Anna's voice is deep and slightly detached while remaining extremely sensual (but that might be the new romantic I never was in me speaking...), and oh so magical...and weird (she DOES talk to a fish at one point for f**sake! Would you come up with such an idea? I must confess I probably would not manage)! Think Eurythmics (the very best), Kraftverk (in a party mood), Bronsky Beat, yazoo... Millions of samples but still pretty minimalistic...After you've played Fake Pajamas (enjoy the Prince HEAVY inspiration) half a trillion times, you're still to uncover ten times more. The album is sawn with a golden thread, perfectly balanced and structured, it transports you over the (spychic) rainbow (why do you think it took me such a long time to write a single word about this record?), defying gravity with the voices of a thousand tales, droping cello in the middle of a beat box and bleeping samples (Hypertension). Every track is a surprise, rich and unpredictable, deep and beautiful...not to forget weirdlyly comfortably weirdly. See how the spell is working on me? I am repiting/sampling myself. She might call this an exercice, I call it a master dark dancing piece. I have a major audio-crush!

.Shoplifting : Body Stories (KRS).
Something strange happened the first time I played that record. It was the exact same day I was reflecting, the very same morning, on a my fridge.
Well, not the fridge in itself, but a poster which says "before rock became boring, music could still be dangerous, very dangerous." I was actually wondering when was the last time I felt that music was "dangerous" ... and yes, I have been enduring WAY too much of MTV Scandinavia recently to manage to find anything dangerous musically... Then I got Body Stories, and there it was: the urgent rage of post punk, its aggressive inovation. This four-piece band is pure and fearless sweat and heartbeat. It explodes, bounces on all walls, both simple and complex, with brilliant kaledeiscopic strucures and the bass sometimes telling different stories... but the whole remaining incredibly coherent. Hannah's (also playing with The Gossip) drumming is intimidatingly precise, minimal but necessary, often linking the guitar riffsto the flying bass. I could not but think of Gang of Four, Huggy Bear, Swell Maps or Clash though there are no direct connection to any of these bands. This album is impressive, extremely physical, purely and truely authentic, simply prefect and yes, dangerous.

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