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Rating: "The Love Substitutes are a band for music store browsers. Like the people that go to record stores to endlessly browse in the collection, and end up buying a CD they already have, just because it is such a great CD to buy."
Ironical and sparse presentation on HeavenHotel's label site, a measly page accompanied by a blog periodically updated by Craig Ward, one of the guitarists, serving as the site, as if they wanted to go unnoticed. Perhaps a way of saying: "In this record we did exactly what we wanted, if you like it, good, if not, it doesn't matter"
There are no label obligations (one of them is the founder: Rudy Trouvé), no logic to follow, pure fun. Just as the main creators of the project have probably always wanted to do, so much so that two of them left dEUS, apparently for trivial reasons (more or less), but essentially - or maybe it's just my imagination - because they were not inclined to all the pressures that an "important" contract entails in the form of promotional tours, trips far from home, airports, economic return for the record label etc. etc.
The music? They create a melodic line, a guitar chord, and put it on loop. A sort of backbone of the song, as a glue for their noisy lusts with pedal strokes (chosen from the seven or eight photographed in the cardboard that holds the CD). Emblematic in this sense are the ten minutes and more of Disconnected, similar to a record obsessively skipping at the same point, brushed and caressed by distortions, a sax bordering on cacophonic and Trouvé's singing-speaking. Sweet instead, in the brightness of the wonky pop of Death Folk Sailor and Open; scorching and abrasive in Summer Of Mars, Deuxième Tableau with Mauro Pawlowski on vocals. Or psychedelic and expanded as in Flatzone or Shanty, a wonderful excursion into "shoegazer" territories reminiscent of Spacemen 3, a perfect closure for a day and a half spent in the studio, recording live, mostly improvising. They almost seem to want to pay homage to that part of '80s and '90s guitar rock, which preferred instrument indulgence for a slow drowning in an ocean of noise over technique and pentatonic scales.
If like me you love this kind of music, it is such a great CD to buy.
Tracklist and Videos
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