Chrisma
Chinese Restaurant

This album was released in 1977, recorded in a London studio, as the punk wave (over)turned the musical world.

"What for she loves when you're low"

This by Chrisma is their debut album; the duo that composes Chrisma is made up of Christina Moser and Maurizio Arcieri. The group's name is thus the union of their two names; she is Austrian, and he is Italian, but both live as expatriates in foreign lands. The duo is also a sentimental couple.

Arcieri was previously the leader of the New Dada and a solo singer. He had interesting collaborations, but it matters little because this album is a break from past music on various levels.

I find it right to mention some names in addition to the two voices...

Durini: Drums -

Vevey: electric and acoustic guitar -

Arcieri: Polymoog synthesizer-

Moser: Acoustic guitar -

Papathanassiou: synthetic drums, keyboards, percussion

Let's get to the Album, which undergoes thousands of influences, yet forges a new armor... the record is composed of 9 tracks (which I will try to list avoiding schematism). It starts with "Thank You," an inexorable electronic advance with a futurist spirit, which seems to rise like a cloud of smog and cover an entire city, a futuristic and dystopian city. The track seems almost like the prologue to a repetitive, dry, biting "Black Silk Stocking" accompanied by Moser's seductive and slithering voice amid a heap of synths and electric discharges. If "Black Silk Stocking" tells of an obsession for a disheveled femme fatale "Oh baby, baby no-one's loving your degeneration", the next song "Lola" narrates the story of a cold and calculating Chinese spy who hides a raging and vengeful soul. This track alone is worth the listen of the entire album; it is carried forward like a romantic tango that precedes the fall into the abyss of an entire world, the electronic vibrations blend with voices that seem to whisper the name "Lola" confusing it with that of "Love"... the swan song of the planet. We then move on to the track "C.Rock" which is an absurd repetition, through a robotic voice, of the phrase "Let's rockin', go back rockin'" for over 5 minutes, with obsessive music that continues to urge itself on like an accelerated and continuous fade.

"What for" speaks of another woman almost immense compared to a helpless man, cruel and ruthless, like the song that seems to recall the golden period of the Stooges. The screams become more pronounced, and the sounds more disconnected and imprecise until a particular and depressive alchemy is reached. The next piece "Wanderlust" is once again very dirty electronic sci-fi "I treat him like dirt, like dirt" in a joyous and fast manner with an almost spoken voice, which by pure mistake reminds me of Bowie and Low, hence Berlin. With "Lycee" we are now lost in the black spectrum of space, which envelops us like a cloak. It is the most relaxed track that can recall some ambient atmospheres of Eno and especially the sounds of Pink Floyd, like major toms floating in Kubrickian spaces, all around the loss of meaning and pain. With "Mandoia" come the end credits projected in a mind dispersed in the void among visions of inner cities, rhythms that seem to echo the loss of gravity and gain of speed towards death, the ending of John Carpenter's movie "Darkstar" comes to mind. A sweet and bitter death. The end is once again "Thank you" that cyclically closes the journey with a tribute and thanks to all those who influenced their music and life, including: "mick jagger" "iggy pop" "chuck berry" "jim morrison" "louis armstrong" "jimi hendrix" and all those not mentioned but remembered.

A record that is therefore a precursor of electronics and its obsessive sounds, a record that resonates with a depression not too dissimilar to that of Joy Division and a theme intertwining love/sex and death with a taste for experimentation and absorbing genres. At the core, there's an unmovable point for Chrisma, which is the fact that they have always experimented and have done so with passion (without mentioning episodes of strange concerts with severed fingers!).

Then came electronics, techno, which often had poor results, but this rough diamond, now forgotten, still shines.

"SHE LIVES ALONE... LOLA..."