Geneviéve Pasquier * Le Cabaret Moi (cd 2009)
The female half of Thorofon / The Musick Wreckers is back. It is only recently that I got to know Geneviéve Pasquier (about a year ago) and I have to admit that I pulled her three earlier releases off the internet. I like some of the songs on these albums. Pasquier has a nice mix between oldstyle industrial and electropop, but the result is less predictable than this description suggests. On “Le Cabaret Moi” Pasquier has a little bit more of a ‘cabaretesk’ sound, the lyrics are now mostly in French and Pasquier incorporated a few new sounds. Still the new album is recognisable in song structure and style. Poppy songs with strange distorted industrial sounds or simply rhythmical industrial with Pasquier’s singing, most of the time nicely catchy. Yep, an original style and I happen to like this relatively more accessible current in the extreme electronics scene and this album is a very nice one in this direction.
Links: Geneviéve Pasquier, Ant-Zen
Murpey’s Law caused some delay to this release, but I finally got my copy yesterday. In the series of DVDs with reports of the shows at the October 2004 Steinklang festival in Vienna/Wien, this is the second. Here we have to rhythmical industrial/noise projects. Tormentum is not too great, only a few nice tracks in their 41 minutes. The sound-quality is not too good either, the right speaker sounds really flat and no, that is not caused by my equipment. Thorofon is more interesting in every way. The sound quality is much better (fortunately), the visuals are more interesting (two persons on stage and they even walk around, plus they include a woman and that helps too), the music is more interesting. It is no This Summer Suicide, but Thorofon showed both their old fashioned noise side and the more rhythmical sound. 52 minutes, not such a bad deal!
I have known Thorofon for years, but haven’t really known them. I have some tracks on compilations, but they never really caught my attention. A while ago an lp of Dogpop was announced which is described as: “between minimal cold electronic classics with a distinctive German voice and soundtrack-like dreams with a touch of antipop”. I was interested enough to order a copy, but I got a note that it was sold out (it seems to be available (again) from different distributors though), so I looked for it with P2P and actually found it too. Indeed, “Popgod” is a strange release with strangely accessible sounds somewhere between old-style industrial and electro/EBM, or maybe more a Neubauten sound. Nice, but not great, so I didn’t get myself the lp yet, but maybe when they play in Antwerp next week. In any case, probably because of the involvement of Thorofon in Dogpop, I apparently also downloaded “This Summer Suicide” and completely forgot to listen to it. When I later had to fill half an hour (I always play music when I am at home) and saw Thorofon I thought: “oh well, nobody has died yet from half an hour of power electronics” (usually I spare my girlfriend). I was still under the impression that Thorofon was one of these old noise/power electronics projects with chaotic sounds and screamed vocals. To my surprise I heard music that I had hoped Dogpop would sound like! From old fashioned (I mean: retro) industrial to nice accessible dance sounds (Neubauten-like?) and here and there some harder industrial and noise tracks. “This Summer Suicide” is really a great album, an industrial classic even! It all reminds a bit of the later material of Haus Arafna, balancing between harsch electronics and more ‘easy listening’ material, but with the difference that Thorofon’s accessible tracks are more accessible than Haus Arafna’s and the industrial parts have a more classical sound. To my surprise there are still copies available of the 500 that are pressed of this album (I got my copy from Steinklang) and it comes in a very nice A5 packaging too. If you are looking for a great industrial album with a refreshing sound, get “This Summer Suicide” (meanwhile I have downloaded another album which is more an old fashioned noise album with indeed chaotic sounds and screamed vocals) and maybe if you like the less-industrial tracks, you may want to listen to Dogpop and The Musick Wreckers (Thorofon is dead and they became TMW).
“This record is the end of Thorofon and the beginning of The Musick Wreckers. Anton Knilpert transforms to Dan Courtman. Sound transforms to Sound.” Thus says the back of this 7″. Thorofon delivers two rather typical and not too good industrial tracks, The Musick Wreckers come up with two weird tracks that are hard to describe. Batcave-like sung/spoken vocals, a strange sampled country-guitar and a weird poppy industrial sound. I don’t know what to call this. There are terms going around such as “antipop”, “angstpop” or “krankpop”, but I don’t know what people mean by them, so I cannot say if they would apply to The Musick Wreckers. Still I guess you can now form an idea of the music, being it only a bit.