Rozz Williams
Sleeping Dogs

As with every artistic life, as with every career, there are various gaps even in the career of Rozz Williams (and let's avoid easy jokes about our man's love for certain intoxications, please). But among these, plugged from time to time by posthumous works such as Accept the Gift of Sin (2003) or The Original Shadow Project (2005), the present Sleeping Dogs seeks to address the greatest and most disconcerting of all: that of the period, moreover artistically fertile, that goes from the de facto dissolution of the Christian Death featuring Rozz Williams, so strongly desired by Cleopatra and opposed by the wicked Valor, to the magical European meeting with Gitane Demone from which the masterpiece Dream Home Heartache (1995) will be born.

In short, it essentially talks about the years 1993-94 (although the vinyl version contains a couple of recordings from '97), years in which Rozz, having temporarily left Eva O following the failure of their marriage and various commercial operations with Cleopatra, decides to form a new band under the name of Daucus Karota, an old youthful whim, and venture on a European tour.

Unfortunately, or fortunately given the quality of the products, there remains scant studio evidence of that period: the Ep Shrine under the name, indeed, Daucus Karota, and the surprise album created together with Gitane Demone which, however, in inventing de facto a new genre, defined by some as gothic lounge, has transfigured the inserted titles almost beyond recognition. Yet in his European escapades, the ingenious Rozz demonstrated that he had retained his overflowing creativity intact and had other arrows in his quiver besides the 5, for goodness' sake... perfect, contained in Shrine.

A first glimpse was already revealed in 2000 with the CD Live in Berlin, an excellent testimony of those tours, containing as many as 3 original unreleased tracks. Today, on the occasion of Rozz's 50th birthday, Sleeping Dogs seeks to complete that meritorious work with the awareness of handling less precious and even more poorly recorded material. Of the 6 unreleased tracks on the album, at least 2 are not original: the first, beautiful, "Time" by David Bowie (as already heard Dodo) and the last "Sunken Rex" by T. Rex by Marc Bolan.

Among the originals, one of the most convincing is "Nostalgia", on the CD present in two versions (actually quite different), although it is a primordial and electric version of the better-known acoustic "A World Apart" sung with Gitane. Just as the following "Bruised" is the earlier version of the more accomplished "2 Steps" from Live in Berlin. It follows a "Flowers" on the guitar, unfortunately less magical and suggestive than the more famous piano sister present on Dream Home Heartache. After a Lou Reed track, here comes what the writer considers the album's masterpiece: "Hold me down", a track that delights and surprises with its noisy bursts followed by continuous downturns into old-school dark guitar phrasing. "The Doll" instead represents another passage that went from "Nostalgia" to "A World Apart". It follows "World Inside", an evolution of "Some Men / The Others" appeared on Iconologia, while the following "Hall of Mirrors", though terribly recorded, is very interesting, featuring a surprisingly melodic refrain. Unfortunately, these last tracks are marred by a decidedly rough recording, despite being subjected to all sorts of filtering and technological improvement, and by an abruptly cut ending seemingly just to omit applause (who knows why).

Other tracks already heard on Live in Berlin follow, in more complete, convincing, or simply better-recorded versions. And here is the great limitation of the Sleeping Dogs operation: important, indeed perhaps essential for Rozz's fans, containing at least three masterpieces ("Time", "Nostalgia" and "Hold me down") but in other ways potentially indigestible for those approaching for the first time the work of the greatest gothic American poet and performer.