KingBathmat
Fantastic Freak Show Carnival

Can you be original without inventing anything? Can you appear modern after a triple somersault with a double twist in the seventies? But above all... is it possible to mix genres, eras, and different sounds without seeming confusing or excessive and rather succeed in asserting your musical identity?
If you're expecting me to give unequivocal answers, you'll be disappointed. As a perfect tightrope walker that I am, I proceed along the rope without hesitation and pass the baton to John Bassett, aka KingBathmat.

"Fantastic Freak Show Carnival", the third work of the British multi-instrumentalist, is the possible answer to the aforementioned anxieties and inquietudes. An atypical rock opera, devoid of a linear concept, that rather develops in the allegorical journey in a phantom Freak Show Town filled with misfits, addicts, mentally ill people, and damned Human Debaser Cases. Stories of ordinary despair of the diverse and maladjusted, “faces robbed of everything" by a deformed reality that precludes any minimum hope of redemption.

To the drama of such a delicate theme are contrasted the surreal settings created by Bassett, which rework the visionary power of the acrid Beatles of the late sixties, especially in the sugary melodies and the construction of extraordinarily catchy vocal harmonies. A bizarre rock Esperanto pervaded by the sacred fire of psychedelia, at times soft and at other times kicking and restless. The guitars weave riffs that can be animalistic and reveal their fangs, only to suddenly become gentle and succumb to dreamy melodies, stained with a bittersweet melancholy. And then clouds of synth, loaded with acid rains and electronic flashes, to confuse the listener's senses, now numb.

"FFSC" is a compact album without dips in tone, which manages to unite the immediacy of the less conventional Brit pop (like Mansun or Doves, to be clear) with the unpredictability of certain vintage progressive, without dragging along the excesses of form and virtuosity of the latter. It is indeed the concluding “Soul Searching Song”, probably the best composition of the lot, that summarizes the musical verb of KingBathmat. A long and stretched out track, with bright tones and multiple moods. The last lysergic trip before the frenzy.

Abandon all hope you who enter this hallucinated world.