L'Enfance Rouge
Beja - Beijing

Since I have temporarily concluded that I hate writing reviews and that in music nothing makes sense except jazz from 1956 to 1963, I thought it would be coherent with this line to review the aforementioned album by the aforementioned rock group.

For those who are not familiar, it is a Franco-Italian mixed group that engages the help of a large group of Tunisian musicians and sings in French, always giving their albums a name consisting of two cities chosen by what I think are variable criteria and in any case are difficult to understand, to testify to the openness of their music and the fact that they are very internationalist - not classist nor too borderline, but you can feel they are socially critical and bohemian in spirit.

To give you an idea, "Beja - Beijing", released almost a year ago and I think (I think) only in digital format, presents the sharpness, tribal nature, and dynamics of groups like Uzeda or in any case the Steve Albini school, but less hardcore and more refined, with a noise approach and an alternative soul closer to the imagery of groups like Sonic Youth, then the passion for semi-spoken lyrics and instruments more linked to traditional music, which, combined with the urbanity and decadence of this kind of music, are very intriguing. However, the project of a noisy math-rock/art-rock with a Mediterranean character - which, to tell you the truth, is a really cool idea, also because I don't hear much about Mediterranean musical tradition in the underground music scene (if you do hear about it, please recommend it), leaving aside the renewed success of pure and hard tarantella, the antics like tunza-taranta, electro-Balkan and all those things that I also dance, but with superiority - in short, the wide-ranging project, in my opinion very convincing, and continued at least until 2008, has slightly declined. The bass line and guitar strumming have prevailed, still united with Mediterranean patterns, modal scales, Arabic ones, dulcimer (listen to "Bogazici" which is amazing), violins, etc. In any case, I did not find the result disappointing at all, even if this album fits more into a '90s revival with overseas influences than an act of mediation between avant-garde and CBGB-style crudeness.

I go back to recommending first and foremost what was produced in the '00s, if you're interested in letting your imagination run wild, but if you wake up tomorrow feeling European, artistic, decadent, but also a bit pissed off, it's still very okay.