Leighton Koizumi feat. Tito & Thee Brainsuckers
When The Night Falls

Mick Jagger has become a knight. Iggy Pop – you have no idea how hard it is for me to admit it to myself! – has gotten lost in the most kitsch of recyclings that rock history has ever contemplated. Leighton Koizumi instead is still alive. And this in itself, is already a noteworthy piece of news. For those who have never heard his name before, I'm talking about a genuine monster of rock history, or dare I say... the greatest garage-punk singer ever. Disappeared for an entire decade, declared dead a thousand times, and a thousand times resurrected, Leighton Koizumi is one of those rare, exceptional individuals who drag along with them paradoxes, excesses, delightful stereotypes of the rock imagination.

Frontman first with the Gravedigger Five and then with the legendary Morlocks in the early eighties, Leighton literally INVENTED a music scene out of nothing, reviving the raw sounds of sixties-garage combined with the urgency of punk (if you think that in the '80s the so-called "alternative" music to chart pop was dominated by new wave and heavy metal!). Now, where he has been hiding for the last ten years and what he has been doing all this time, he will tell us in the hypothetical autobiography he will (never) write when he's truly a dinosaur, if ever he feels like telling us. The facts say that today, thanks to David Lenci and the Tito Lee gang (white flies of garage-punk in Italy), Leighton Koizumi is back on stage, and above all, recording an album. Specifically, When The Night Falls is a collection of 13 electrifying covers taken from the "minor" classics of the proto-psychedelic and punk season at the end of the sixties.

An unmissable rock and roll primer, masterfully conducted by Leighton's histrionic interpretation, lurking alligator in the hard swamp of "Get Out Of My Life Woman" (streaked with hoarse "soul" veins); the fast and hallucinatory beat of the Outsiders' "You Mistreat Me", the harsh tones of the Kinks' "I Need You", passing through the malice of "No Friend Of Mine" which more than the Sparkles recalls the savage screams of the Swamp Rats (Ah! The Swamp Rats!!! What a band!... nostalgia, you scoundrel...). A swirling descent through the flames to reach the peak of the album with "Signed D. C.", an absolutely heartbreaking and chilling version of the drug-induced delirium of Arthur Lee's Love; then the electric whirlwind of valve amplifiers in "Born Loser" and "Project Blue" up to the halt, that psychedelic gem that is "When The Night Falls" where Koizumi drags the group into a relentless shamanic rite, punctuated by Tito's guitar's acidic dribbles. Magic, hypnosis, raw rock 'n' roll.

A FABULOUS album. Plus, the album's production is impeccable and "philologically" correct; vintage instrumentation at the service of modern technology. That is, no bullshit, how garage should be played in 2004! In summary, forty minutes of pure slaughter for a fast-paced, wicked album, animated by a brutal sensuality... like rubbing against a metal grater!