Maybe it's because I have no more time, maybe it's because I've been away longer than usual.
For four months, I've embraced NASpI and ashes, sprawled on the couch while half of my severance
fried my irises.
Fifty-five inches in 4K and 8-bit video games. In my ears spun half a record, side A of a split
by the Druids with the Electric Nettles. Shutters on the windows: the "outside world", stayed
outside.
Dark notes through slow synapses, enchanted by newfound peace and fifteen pixels exploding in a
cloud of blood through a LED-backlit blue sky.
Four songs awaited for a year, and a debut EP that had nailed me: "French? Seriously?
No, come on, you're joking."
No, no joke.
It's the most beautiful rock album I've heard among those released this year. It turned out that
it was May, spring beyond my shutters I don't know at what point it was, my living room
smelled of wild mammals, ashes, and piss. That split was still grinding neurons, the Play Station
sucked in smoke through the fan and I counted the money going out.
while rolling others in Rizlas.
When the phone rings, I'm cursing online in front of Google, searching for a way to defeat the dragon,
armed only with a VHS, four matches, and a skimmer.
The phone's trill brings me back to reality for a moment, I focus on the favorites on-screen next
to the browser's scrollbar. I click on them instinctively, going from memory as if I were tying my
shoelaces in a hurry and say, "Hello."
They invite me out when I don't feel like going out. My butt is stuck in the couch, my head
is heavy, my armpit stinks, the internet is in front of my eyes, and IT'S OUT!, the album is out.
Offliberty and low-fidelity downloads, "no, I'm tired" "I'm in pieces" "I can't do it."
The album starts meanwhile, distortions between punk and new wave, often heavy stoner-doom. ...But what,
French? no come on, you're joking.
No, no joke.
On the other end of the phone, they mention a name: "X" who has returned to Italy.
I've been out of the world for four months by my choice and eighteen by somebody else's choice.
In those eighteen, Mister X with my friend Y had started a computer stuff business.
AI stuff and things like that, small change. For six months I knew they had been here looking for
funding, then with the last money they had left, they set off for the new world, as they wanted to
bury themselves between cows and red earth. Even though
things went differently.
For a year, I was following the ventures of X and Y who occasionally appeared on the social
media of the moment.
Photos of happy people, in a beautiful place. Folks doing something concrete
against all expectations and predictions, the results? one overwhelming victory after
another. "You guys are great!" I wrote them "hang tough" they replied.
"Hang tough... Nah, at some point better NASpI..."
"X" I really want to see him again. I take 4 licorices to raise my blood pressure, I drop eye
drops in my eyes, wash
armpits and teeth, open the windows wide and HOLY, THE SUN!
Since when did it come back to life?
Since when would the French fit well into the soundtrack of us "the boys from the Berlin
Zoo"?
I put on the good T-shirt, download the album onto the phone, and leave the house.
The alternation of calm and distilled quiet irony with electric sabbath outbursts as
I reach my destination's doorstep confirms yet another
"French? but are you joking?"
No, no joke.
To wrap it up in a few lines: Mr. X is hiring, looking for specialists in the alpha
and omega fields. I don't even know a word of English, jokingly I say: I'll do the Omga" and he seriously says: "we're desperate and can't find anyone, if you want to try, I have nothing to lose". And I, laughing, say "okay, when?". Meanwhile, the druids reach an acid piece made of screams and a riff smothered in toxic echoes
that is almost a triumph, an anonymous bass line that drills the skull opens the following track,
deep voice set, stoner punk and kraut, and goddamn the apotheosis of an orgasm in bell-bottom pants. The rock album of twenty eighteen, trust me.
And he says to me "tomorrow", but tomorrow can't possibly be in San Francisco, which hires people in Milan?
He tells me "Yes"
And I start thinking about a detox plan.
"What time?" and I no longer have a damn urge to laugh, the train is passing for real, and
if I can get on it, I'll finally see what it's like inside. The Druids don't care about any of this, they keep playing the album convinced the DDR and Ian Curtis still exist, with full
awareness of September 11, Barack Obama, the Bataclan, Paris Hilton, Trump, and Rick &
Morty.
"After lunch, okay?"
"Yes, it's fine, but do you realize these guys are French?"
"Are you kidding"
No, no joke.
And so, four months later, no joke, I'm in.
And the album is a damn bomb, despite being impossible to tell you something
while I want to talk about something else and the fact that, well, maybe something better came out, I've
been on another planet for a while. If that's the case, I must have missed out on an amazing year. I gained four months of Trainspotting and two desks. One here and the other in the
Silicon Valley (I don't even know how to spell it, go figure). After this stroke of luck, the first bad luck
to hit me might as well be getting mistakenly arrested and raped in a cell.
And to close I'll leave you the last track from the Druids' debut EP. If you don't like it, you're French.
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