Her Space Holiday
Manic Expressive

It's impossible not to feel affection for an American named Marc Bianchi (Marc with a "c", moreover...). When you see him live, tall and extremely thin, with big glasses, a true nerd look who spends more hours with his laptop than with the rest of humanity, tattoos everywhere and a very very cheap flannel shirt, he instantly becomes your idol, the one that each of us has always wanted to be but never had the courage to, almost a superhero, a symbol of redemption against a society founded on superficiality.

Marc Bianchi almost evokes tenderness, but when you hear his music, you can tell he truly has guts. Her Space Holiday is the moniker he hides behind to do his thing, and he does it quite well. "Manic Expressive" is an album from 2001, and, incidentally, it is a great album. Fundamentally, it's bedroom pop, a sort of "Kid A" much more pop and recorded on a very low budget. It's glitch pop with a soul, where 80s style synthesizers prevail, very liquid and enveloping, paired with guitar arpeggios, accompanied by syncopated rhythms and often garnished with chamber orchestration with strings that seem to have come out of a Bach composition (I still can't figure out whether they are sampled or not...). Bianchi's voice is uncertain, hesitant, a worthy representation of his personality, and ideally matches the author's music; in any case, we're on very high levels. Among the tracks featured, fantastic "Lydia" (very evocative, sounds like Everything But The Girl remixed by Telefon Tel Aviv), "The Ringing In My Ears" (a textbook case for its string background), "Polar Opposite" (killer guitar arpeggio garnished with very warm synths, with a dramatic twist at the end given by the entry of a very cinematic orchestration that makes the piece almost dramatic).

An ideal album for driving aimlessly down deserted roads at night, accompanied by your own thoughts, letting yourself be lulled by the reflective atmospheres crafted by superhero Marc Bianchi.