L.A.S.’s Crime – Mésmerique
This L.A.S.’s Crime / Domestica collaboration comes with a strapline courtesy of 16th century Parisian scientist Jean Sylvain Bailly: ‘magnetism without imagination doesn’t produce anything, imagination without magnetism produces crises’. Frankly, we could end this review here, however, to take a bite out of Mésmerique, this collection of restored demos deserves a few more words from this humble 21st century writer and lover of goth-tinged synth sonority.
The 11-tracks reissued here come from four-track demos recorded by the Marchetti-Brogi duo throughout the 1980s. They have been majestically cleaned up, which L.A.S.’s Crime’s stuff really needs. Even in the ever-inventive context of Italian darkwave – and even in a style of music which electro-purists might find too theatrical – Marchetti and Brogi have an extraordinarily wide and varied palette of sounds, and have always displayed detailed attention to texture. Keeping the charms of roughness in mind, it’s essential to hear these demos restored to glorious technicolor (or to hyper-exposed HD black and white, if you will), as they are here. Here, they shine.
The LP is a journey through some of the lesser known echelons of L.A.S.’s Crime dark swagger, brutal approach to rhythm and unashamedly romantic knack for melody and plaintive lyrical content. The tracks have been chronologically assembled to follow a path of the group’s work: earlier demos such as “Mary’s Room’”, “Macabradanza” and “Dark Orris” are perfect darkwave productions on steroids; violent beats, gothic chord progressions, and an intense anguish will project you into the heart of serious Italian dark dancing. “Five Lies”, another early piece, is a dramatic, gothically minimal piece, which revels in a slow, epic existentialism before opening onto an intensely danceable modular synth.
Swirling on top and pounding on the bottom, things get even more interesting on Side B with “Flax Girl Room”, a heavy piece which any lover of any form of wave should hear. Terribly inventive but never ‘difficult’, the piece keeps a classic synth melody going through different washes and textures, with a certain amount of humour as well as a bleak erotic charge. “The act”, “The Waiting” and “This Form” show off the more sophisticated aspects of the band’s production – more akin to the kind of selection we heard on Mannequin’s LP of L.A.S.’s Crime material, Disphoria 1985-1989, back in 2012. Although still powerfully obscure, these are tracks which experiment with different melodic registers, and they show a different kind of fascination for synthesis: spiralling bleeps and drones in layers of different octaves and intensities; voices recorded in the background, heavily echoed, that sound distant, more adult and for that reason steeped in mystery.
The hammering, hymn-like “Today’s Sky” is a highlight, partly because of its strangely tender lyric: ‘I cannot listen to all this any more, please give me a kiss tomorrow morning, give me a kiss when I get home’. Same goes for “Ill Merrygoround” which circulates in a pulsating, ripping and violent version elsewhere. This Mésmerique LP is a quick-footed, quick-minded collection of brilliantly restored tracks, but it’s also something of a monument for what it salvages, for what it finally makes available. These are some of the most cherished demos of Italian darkwave, and in terms of the genre, really, if you haven’t heard this you haven’t heard anything. And if you have, then you know that imagination plus magnetism produces an electric charge of diamond-like brilliance.
Flora Pitrolo
Tracklisting:
1. Mary’s Room
2. Macabradanza
3. Five Lies
4. Statuary E-motion
5. Dark Orris
6. Flax Girl Room
7. The Waiting
8. The Act
9. Today’s Sky
10. This Form
11. Ill Merrygoround