Zita Swoon
Plage Tattoo/Circumstances

LA RECENSIONE

There are many tattoos on the body of Stef Kamil Carlens.
A slender body, that of SKC, as thin as his voice and his long red hair. Etched almost everywhere with abstruse drawings.

This is how his creation is – the most experimental.
With Plage Tattoo/Circumstances his Zita Swoon accompanies on stage a surreal ballet, staged by Koen Augustijnen and Tamayo Okano (and recorded on the video track of the CD). It is a slender body of melodies, with abstruse experimental designs that, like tattoos, etch it (inflame it, soften it) here and there: a “music/dance/play” with which Stef, after the alternative of dEUS and the quirky blues-jazz of Moondog Jr and Kiss My Jazz, arrives in 2000 at noise-avantgarde composition. The schizophrenia that will be of Xiu Xiu, in a format that recalls My Sister = My Clock, the EP by the 'cousins' dEUS.

The opening track, Up To The Moon (Daytime), weaves a landscape as spectral as it is calm with the guitars. But it will not last: soon the “circumstances” intervene.

Literal wastepaper that disturbs the flow of melody.
A zapping between TV stations that forms a rhythmic base for a gentle march (Stay With Us), linking it to a trance track (Spider Grinder).
English-Italian translation lessons (?!?) that spice up the strange refrain of Hungry – while the industrial For Blood Effects In The Mouth needs no translation.
A phone call in Japanese that concludes the jarring dance of the guitars of Into His Arms.
The reading of “A Woman Is A Word” (poem by SKC) that chains together a lo-fi waltz (Learn To Dance With Her) and electronic Drop.
A philosophical chat between two friends searching for a parking spot introduces an unclassifiable People Can’t Stand The Truth.

The only track that really seems like a song is the tale of Little Marie, sung by a heart-wrenching Stef over an off-key arpeggio. Shortly after, it all ends as it began, with an even more spectral Up To The Moon (Nighttime).

An absurd thing, that cannot leave one indifferent.