Paul Chain
Violet Art Of Improvisation

And so Paul Chain leaves the Death SS and forms his Violet Theatre (it was 1984).

“Violet Art of Improvisation”, released in 1989, is a double album gathering recordings from 1981 to 1986, and it well represents the phase of migration that brought the legendary Paul from the Horror Metal sponsored by the historic band he founded together with Steve Sylvester to the psycho-doom of his solo phase, which consecrated him to the status of an authentic luminary (with strong international recognition) of the genre itself.

More than an autonomous and independent work, “Violet Art of Improvisation” is the (disorderly) programmatic manifesto of the new Paul Chain, suspended between metal and experimentation. And each of these two dimensions is well represented in each of the two discs present here, one electric, the other electronic: the first disc, in fact, contains the oldest sessions (1981 the first two tracks, 1984 the third), delivering us a Paul Chain in the most typically rock guise: a rock that dutifully bows before the Sabbath oracle, but does not renounce those experimental impulses that probably led Chain away from the canonical heavy metal of his no longer Death SS. The second disc (recorded in 1986), on the other hand, appears more considered, primarily oriented on keyboards and synthesizers, masterfully handled by our hero as well.

Two distinct albums, therefore, the first quite raw (home recordings and absolute randomness), the second more mature (perhaps animated by a concept), unified by the creative verve of Paul Chain, who once again stakes everything on sole improvisation. IMPROVISATION is the key word to understand Paul Chain's solo career.

Let there be rock, then: rough sounds and direct tracking. “Teschi Tetri in Luce Viola” is a half-hour-long onslaught (!!!), opened by a brief organ prelude (the organ we like, that rotten organ from a dusty and decrepit church haunted by damned priests) and then driven by the same bass pattern (Claud Galley) and the same marching drum beat (Thomas Hand Chaste). Above: the mythical Paul's guitar, devastating as a shovel-full of tar in the eyes. Like the endless suites of cosmic masters Hawkwind, the track progressively dissolves, the doom matrix disintegrates to make way (much space) for hysterical and dissonant keyboard improvisations (also baroque) and effects (pure electronic lysergia), while bass and drums continue undeterred, like wind-up toys, to the end; traces of electric guitar and sizzling feedback rust up a piece that seems to come directly from a session of sodomy between Tony Iommi and Frank Zappa (with hemorrhoids). The voice is not absent either: affected, reverberated, it ends up playing a secondary role (which is understandable if you consider that Chain loved to mess around with totally invented phonemes, always according to the theory of permanent improvisation). An excellent track, then, psychedelic and powerful, which despite its exhausting length, plays well on the stereo, without creating that sense of imbalance that can also be translated with the epithet “where the hell am I?” which experiments of this kind often inspire.

“Emarginante Viaggio” is a guitar/bass/drum/vocal five-minute rant in which the rhythmic base gains greater dynamism, transitioning from interlocutory free-jazz phrases to bashing rock escapades, well supported by Chain's sharp guitars and dreamy vocalizations.

Closing the madness parenthesis, “X Ray” is another long session (twenty-three minutes) of liquefied guitar work that softens the tones and concludes the first disc under the banner of a smoky doom/blues focused on the continually changing movements of Chain's guitar, which one might suspect he played while stuffed with all the possible drugs (an impression that doesn't fade, even though in the end the track becomes more robust, taking the progressive and bombastic step of a badass cop show from the seventies).

In this first portion of the work, the grandeur evoked by other works of a psycho-doom master (or rather dark-metal) like Chain is not registered, but the wild spirit of a decaying rock that does not fear to be wrecked against the acidic rocks of psychedelia and the most forlorn blues is appreciated.

Far more interesting, in my opinion, is the second portion of the work, overall more homogeneous, concise, and considered, capable of showing us a more mature artist, but above all credible even outside the clichés of the more classic doom/metal. In these six tracks (which could also be seen as a single forty-one-minute composition) we find traces of the Pink Floyd of the triptych “Dark Side of the Moon”, “Wish You Were Here”, and “Animals”, influences of the cosmic experiments of the various Schulze and Tangerine Dream, echoes of the visionary madness of the mature Van Der Graaf Generator. All of this, of course, reinterpreted (at least ten years later, this must be said) by Chain's compositional talent, which here sharpens his more mystic aspirations, purged of the fundamental heavy/doom component.

“Old Way”, in its nine minutes, enchants by the obsessive pulsing of basses and the endless flights of organ and synthesizers. Chain's voice is mantra-like and finally takes on a significant role. The nearly seven minutes of “Hypnosis” are its worthy appendix, carrying forward a discourse made of ethereal and relaxing electronics (with a dissonant manipulation of tapes), which in its hypnotic progress (pushed by slight rhythmic hints) knows how to drag the listener into states of trance skillfully conducted and devoid of the disturbing effect provoked by the river improvisations that characterized the tracks present in the first volume of the work. “Causal Two Your Mister” instead arrives at the most cultured avant-garde, combining the more pataphysical Wyatt (consider the fragmented vocal phrases recomposed in abstract collages reminiscent of the masterpiece “End of an Ear”) with the surreal hysteria of the Van Der Graaf Generator of “Pawn Hearts” (I refer to the whirling synth loops and the swirling electronic basses that recompose a hallucinatory picture of sidereal perdition).

In “Celtic Rain” the guitar returns as the protagonist (in an acoustic version, this time), and the discourse is brought back to the grooves of a folk with a much more earthy flavor. A more properly catchy track that pairs with the sophisticated “Dedicated to Jesus” (the only canonically sung track, which is no coincidence that it features a real singer, such as Gilas, the only guest chosen for the occasion), where Chain arrives at an auteur dark-wave dominated by more substantial electronic beats, and within which our hero, as a savvy keyboardist, can finally let loose his more romantic instincts.

Finally, the obsessive organ of “End by End” is beautiful, a worthy closure of the work: a desolate chant with strong hypnotic power that resumes the mystical tones with which this second part was opened.

Summing up, “Violet Art of Improvvisation” is a work (if we can call it that) that lays the groundwork for Paul Chain's far-sighted solo career and clearly explains how much the creative ego of the author himself was widely outside the robust (and anything but criticizable) heavy metal towards which the Death SS of nemesis-friend Steve Sylvester were heading.

The ball is in the center: who will win the game?