Royal Trux
Twin Infinitives

I was on one of those trendy summer terraces. The sky obscured by enormous umbrellas (what are they for?), the full moon lost among ill-mannered corneal-raping street lamps. Artificial alcohol with exotic appearances tickled unsightly biceps, and thonged butts of those who 2-months-without-step-and-they-go-flabby. The music I won't even bother telling you about, you already know it. Before escaping, I indulge in a cigarette by the dark sea. The wild and lascivious motion of the waves, in the relative silence of that corner of the terrace, incomprehensibly empty. Any decent person would have set the whole place on fire, using the excellent citronella candles, and especially those deliciously flammable straw extensions of the umbrellas.

A moderate person like me, instead, goes home and turns to Royal Trux.

Nothing is truer after "Twin Infinitives". Or at least, nothing is more certain. It's 1988 when Neil Hagerty, former member of the late Pussy Galore, founds the Royal Trux project with his delightful companion Jennifer Herrema. The idea is simple and reckless: involve everything that has been rock in an immense suicidal orgy, to generate who knows what.
Two years later, in a San Francisco deformed by the systematic use of heroin, the duo reaches its peak. "Twin Infinitives" is the "summa" of the Royal Trux program, an album of colossal scope whose toxic residues have continued to contaminate otherwise too well-mannered sounds since then. I think Hagerty already knew everything. Deconstruct rock, and take it to its extreme consequences. That was the intent.

The goal is not the sterile blank slate, but the creation of a fertile humus for the years to come. We don't know how much philanthropy there might be in all this; I would rather lean toward a scandalous act of love for musical art, and the pleasure of seeing tiny spores of a fragmented reality fly everywhere, now obscenely true.
And they really loved rock, Neil and Jennifer. The veneration for the Stones and Hendrix, inevitably crossed by the ravings of Beefheart, and people like Faust and Pere Ubu and generally the most profane exponents of the German '70/'80 scene. "Twin Infinitives" carries all this and much more in its cauldron. No group from the fertile noise scene of those years went this far.

Royal Trux lashes out beyond all measure, returning to what is called a track an absolutely transfigured form, despite the persistence of the same, identical elements of a "Jumpin' Jack Flash". But it's all new here. Ruthless are the distortions, continuous is the drip of microelectronic events, relentless is the deconstruction suggested by the two hyperuranic voices. A wicked bacchanal, beautiful to cry over. A cubist masterpiece, one of the most dazzling viewpoints in the short history of electric music.
Yeah, the point of view, that's precisely what I wanted to reach. Habit clouds the senses, inscribes consciences within relentless trajectories. Habit takes you by the arm, and leads you gently to the grave. Or look from elsewhere. That's precisely why "Twin Infinitives" is one of the most disarming manifestations of joy I have ever encountered. "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller comes to mind. Joy, of the kind that gives you goosebumps, when you let yourself be invaded by life in the wild.

Spectacular, alienated blues fragments, or chilling piano phrases. Gloomy vocal phrases, tribal hints. Everything is dawn in "Twin Infinitives", every sound carries the seed of enthusiasm and the vast expanse of the future within. I stop for a technical K.O., but don't think I'm exaggerating; indeed, I haven't said anything.

Moderation has its undeniable advantages: I'm not in jail for homicidal arson, but I breathe free, what's more, the air is crystal clear.