De-Bons-en-Pierre — Crepes EP
I’d like to begin this with an effusive rant on how much I love the Streetwalker project Beau Wanzer has with Elon Katz and how I am forever thankful for Boomkat for recommending it to me many birthdays ago. But nobody has time for that.
We’re back to Dark Entries again, who when not recusing 80s underground are also putting out the cutting edge of electronic music’s gritty concrete sidebelly.
As with previous Dark Entries, this release has been lovingly mastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. The quality of the recording here is tight and lush as I’ve come to expect from Mr. Horn. My admiration for his work continues to grow.
The stark sort of minimal disco-industralism that Beau Wanzer and Maoupa Mazzocchetti ply conjoins in a fleshy 1970s euro-horror Basket Case type electro inflection that hints of people in black clothes with angular hair swaying and waving their arms in unison at the edge of the strobe.
“Suel Comme Sombre” opens the release with a sharp ’80s industrial-electro track with what I assume is Mazzocchetti’s voice. There are fragments where I am reminded of Michael Forshaw. As if his particular brand of UK boogietronica has been chained into fuel tank for a Mad Max road warrior car made from Maurizio Bianchi’s dreamed attempts at making Italian italodisco-industrial after being slipped some reissues from Mannequin.
There’s a slight seamless quality to the release as it blends off into itself with the booty and Florida rippled electro of “Whole Body Irradiator” before the stomp of “The Mud Man is coming”. The latter has a very close if faster and muddier audio parallel to L.I.E.S label-mate Tzusing’s “1976”. Which incidentally always sends me off on a Velvet Acid Christ kick, if only because of the sample usage.
Side B kicks off with the slow “Francine” with its duelling rhythms and 1980s science-horror film voice a sort of martial electro Whitehouse-ish slow number for near the end of the night when people are waiting for the next bit of fast to kick in and they just want to sway in the shadows whilst clutching each others hips.
Then it rips into the crackling popping sheet metal sounds of “The Eyebrows of a Salesgirl” and its near 130 BPM gallop. “Démissionne en Tuant Ton Patron” or translated to English “resign by killing your boss” closes things out and it’s my favourite track on the release. It sounds as if someone took some Studio 1 and is mixing it with dirty electro. It could be considered a weird track and maybe not to all tastes.
Fans of Wanzer and Maoupa will know what they’re getting to a point and likely enjoy it a lot. But this is definitely an accessible record with something weird and dance-y for everybody. The generation who grew up on Fangoria and Return of the Living Dead punk continue to warp and twist electronic music and techno in new and retro ways.
If numbers mean anything in the tilted subjective bullshit of reviewing things… this release is a solid 4…4…3 .8ish 4…it’s very good ok…?
It is available on Dark Entries own shop
It was available on Boomkat
And also Clone.nl
Here is a Streetwalker track for your troubles
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