The new album coming from the German band Place4Tears (formerly known as Blurred Lipstick) is not exactly a new one, as Tyvers Oben â?“ the singer and composer which could be considered the mayor of this imaginative place collecting tears like an artificial lake could make with raindrops and turning them into whispering dark oblique music... - previously issued it as a self-made album three years ago. Afterwards, they gained an agreement with Echozone and they decided to re-issue it with just a little difference, the absence of the only German-speaking track, Tödliche freiheit, and presumably an improved master. From a strictly stylistic viewpoint, itâ??s clear they try to avoid any cliché, even if they seems intimately related to the most ethereal and dark-tinged side of 80s wave music (we could mention notorious names such as those of Cocteau Twins â?“ above all the first darkest ones â?“ and the entrancing effected guitars of the main craftsman of their sound, the highly inventive and emotional Robin Guthrie, as well as the very first steps of Dead Can Dance and any conglomeration between these two bands... you could imagine a sort of transposition of Faith & The Muse into something which could alternatively be turned into Faith & The Speller or Faith & The Satyr!) and â?“yes!- it seems there are some slices of figurative theatre encrypted in some tracks such as the distorted beauty and the deep sadness of princess Valium, where the plucky guitars seems to say good bye to a depressed girl, treated with tranquilizers and anti-depressive pills (a Lynch-ian mood seems to pervade the musical space after a female voice ensigns last salutations: "you went away/you left this life/you chose the pills/out of pain... .you went away/from darken sky/I will miss you/and say good bye") as well as some narrative links to an imaginary journey into seaâ??s depths as well as some "natural" and symbolic descriptions perfectly fitted to the anguished and melancholic mood soaking the whole album â?“ in particular tracks such as the hypnotic Septembers breath , the nostalgic Keep Me Back and the leading astray Lovesick). Drum rhythms will gradually hypnotize you as well as the entrancing female voices by Sabine and Julia through a wooden (but intimately desolate) place where dreamy states and obscure moods intertwines and all these elements substantially clearify whatâ??s standing under the wordy way someone used to describe their style, i.e.Cold Heavenly Goth...

By the way, you could definitively argue Place4Tearsâ?? sound could be even more entrancing and psychedelic after youâ??ll listen to the "remixes" proposed at the end of this record: the gentle touch added by Sean Bowley, the singer of the cult-band Eden, in the catching interpretation of Tears Of Avalon as well the suffocating slow-mo sad core in the re-interpretation of Septembers Breath by Ashley Dayour â?“ the singer of Whispers in The Shadow â?“ could be considered as possible paths this interesting goth-wave band should walk to innovate their style. They introduce their music saying itsâ?? based on (and recorded for) life, love, fear, death and loneliness (... existential themes whose gothic followersâ?? minds are crowded with... )... The listener could sentence about this magniloquent declaration of intent indeed!

The psychedelic rock fever as well as its renaissance propelled by relatively young generations whose ears and minds have been excited not only by electronic psychoactive movements (Chemical Bros, Orbital, LCD Soundsystem, FSOL and so on) but also by a rediscovery of some legends which added that some fruity juice for brains in their personal rock formulas (Ozric Tentacles, Loop, Spaceman 3) in UK seems to be even more infectious than H1N1 virus and if from the electronic side weâ??ve recently heard some interesting proposals mainly from Manchester (if you still donâ??t know them, check some releases by the astonishing Working For A Free Nuclear City... ), thereâ??re some bands trying to dig into the fertile soil of the psychedelic frontline, exploring layers and layers of musical sediments: Spiral 25 is a cheekily pretty band from Oxford whose style looks deeply influenced by a plenty of brain invigorating scrubbers covering almost 40 years of music history, going from 60s bands (The Velvet Underground, 13th Floor Elevators) to some pioneers of the so-called space rock, from psychedelic bands of the 80s (we already mentioned some... ) to contemporary ones (The Warlocks, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), but the most perceptible chapter of British music seems to be the one related to some hedonistic and deeply individualistic pop/rock of early 90s: the use of reverbs and delays on guitar layers by the skilled guitarist Chris Mongerâ??s going to remind Stone Roses or Charlatans, while the vocalist Russell Denham seems to be a genetically modified hybrid between the shrill tones of Ian Brown getting to grips with the devil which used to possess Jim Morrisonâ??s vocal chords! This Ep â?“ available directly from their website in a card digipak format for just £4 or digitally via Napster, Amazon, iTunes and other online retailers - contains just 4 tracks, but theyâ??re enough to show their skills.

Have a listen to Shadows In Line (in my modest opinion, the best song of this sampling as well as the most persuading body of evidence Mr.Denham could be possessed by the above-mentioned devil indeed) or Let The Light Shine On (youâ??ll easily admit the title could continue sentencing "... and Let Your Hands Shake In The Air", when youâ??ll hear the energy of their sound drenched by blues-tinged melodies) for instance and youâ??ll easily understand this bandâ??s ready to emerge from the crowded abyss of collegial music scene. Just a short anecdote before let you search them on the Internet... when I absent-mindedly had their promotional cds in my hand, their name as well as the slogan-like references to light and glittering in some titles let me think about a sort of promotional dvd by a company, advertising some kind of low voltage energy saver lamp... and, hey, I found this casual comparison could perfectly fit Spiral 25â??s sound!

When gothic began colliding with electronics, a lot of nice surprises came into light, but thereâ??s also another side of gothic bands and musicians which seems to prefer interweaves with ethnic and folk (sometimes forgotten) influences. It depends mostly from the setting even a goth musicians has (not only from the artistic viewpoint) grown... thatâ??s just one of the reason we think the contamination of naturally gothic musical bent (sometimes very close to Deine Lakaienâ??s sound)with sonorities reminding some musical roots as well as some abandoned poetry of inner mountain regions of Irpinia (a rural area, tragically become famous for a devastating earthquake in the 80s that could be considered naturally gothic as well... ) proposed by the Italian band Dialis is not intended for gammers, standing as interesting musical stuff to be welcomed in the international Neo-Folk scene (even if itâ??s indirectly suffering from the violent struggle between music labels, trying to tempt the listeners throughout over advertised deep-frozen records that you could overheat in a microwave oven in order to ear ... itâ??s just the same stuff coming over and over again, folks!).

By walking on a wire between folklore and darkness, Dialis are able to lift those traditions in a sort of mystical dimension, tinged by a gloomy decadent roller coating: the euphonic voice of Franco Bottoni â?“ which sometimes reminds some glorious crooners such as Nick Cave in tracks like Precatio and the lovely Close Ocean, with a guessed presence of a soprano saxophonist in the line up - and the melancholic piano of Giuseppe Di Lorenzo sounds like an uddered and dignified discharge for listenersâ?? mind, the bluesy guitar grooves lying on pensive lyrics mirror some husky reflections on art (even if sometimes they seems to strand and hesitate on the same old matters... ) , but even if the richness in musical tones created by the contrast between the guitar and other instruments (in particular the piano... ) seems to give a certain tepidness to cold stones (someone could imagine them singing... ) I donâ??t agree with Dialis when they refers to rock while introducing to the album (except of A Sweet Eclipse), whose features clearly emerges in the final act of this record, the de-fibred A Cliff Apart, a lovely track youâ??ll easily put in your "Favorites" folder together with tracks such as the poetic glimpse of A Fragile Rebirth, the dialogue between violin and Francoâ??s evocative voice in Abeyance or the frayed Labyrinth Of Senses, a track in which the tension inspiring the whole album looks definitively "unfastened". By the way, this record is really mature and full of ... maybe too mature for being a debut album... the main risk of such maturity is that listeners are going to expect more from their next stage... and weâ??re still in suspense as well!

In the middle of the so-called "Blue banana" â?“ a wide economical conurbation going from Lancashire to Milan area - thereâ??s a small village with a coke mine called Seremange, a place where carbon clouds and factories caused a mutation of the landscape by giving eyes to hills and trees (!), and in the middle of Seremange, thereâ??s JeFFâ??s world, an almost unknown place depicted as full of madness, sadness and despair... Well, itâ??s not a fairytale as you could imagine, but itâ??s just a vivid way adopted by this Frenchman to describe its unpredictable style featuring a bizarre fusion of dark, gothic, industrial ores, aggregated by a metal seneschal and distributed according to punkey marketing principles (as Maurer Jeff manages its own label, Altsphere, and releases devotionally following the Do-It-Yourself way... printed cover art, mastered cdR copies...and obviously cheaper prices... if you want to have a copy of In and Between, you have to pay 3 dirty euros and maybe youâ??ll get a discount on a glass of Belgian beer as well!!!), confirmed by some references even in the music style to Global Genocide Forget Heaven, a legendary Californian industrial music band which moved its first steps by producing â?“ strictly on tapes - a plenty of demos . and gradually gaining respect by a lot of zines. Even if thereâ??re some recognizable influences by Nine Inch Nails as well as the most depraved French dark-industrial scene, Jeffâ??s music is not easy to categorize for different reasons as he used to change musical idioms in the same track as well.

It seems he sometimes tries to give voice (funny the way JeFF play a multitrack to juxtapose vocal layers giving the illusion there are two or more singers, even if this effect combined with Monsieur Jeffâ??s French stress â?“ easy to listen if your ears are quite trained in recognizing different ways of pronunciation of English language... ) to emotions such as despair, "death-in-life-and-life-in-death" and angriness till the point they rise turning into wall of sounds... .from gloomy piano melodies to furious rages of distorted guitar, from atmospheric lo-fi synthetic organs to depressed vocal emulsions, from funeral marches to dancing beats... style changes are really unpredictable and sudden... In and Between is just apparently illogic, but itâ??s not in our opinion and even Jeffâ??s unconventional way of singing alternative spoken words makes sense. Some highlights amidst this 12-track CDR are An active creation â?“ it makes me think about an imaginary mad scientistâ??s laboratory -, the metallic experiments (even on voice) of the terrificly depressed Years Ago (the nostalgia evoked by the title itself is not so casual... ), the frenzy hebephrenia of Serialfuckerâ??s beat patterns, Dead Star (a track which could be subtitled "the dark side of a rock/pop star"!) and the oppressive Tell me why. Iâ??ve found it very funny some 8bit sequences such as in DWDY and Whiksey Talks (I couldnâ??t imagine a bottle of Jack uses to put a potato in the mouth when speaking... !). By the way (In and Between), it seems thereâ??s no hope. Be aware and prepare to lick Jeffâ??s despair!

Lyrics (totally crazy...!) available on the website.

When I listened to some excerpts of their previous demos, I wondered why any label didnâ??t make any proposal to this gothic/folk Italian band from Venice before and weâ??re almost sure that the small independent Italian label Ark â?“ which already got engaged with renowned gothic bands such as Ataraxia, Violet Tears, Corde Oblique and Argine â?“ has decided to bet on their skill and and their interesting musical formula and arguably planned great things after feeling the same surprise. If you consider that there are not so many innovative projects and band from the gothic slops, we can reasonably suppose that those blood-tinged pale hands printed on the cover artwork of this "serious" debut album by Having Thin Moonshine are going to draw whirling mantras and disentangling imaginary ropes in the darkness under favorable winds. One of the "secret recipe" of their music formula could be singled out in the indisputable reciprocal understanding and "synchronicity" between the guitarist Pietro Baldan and the bassist Dario Belardinelli, well supported by the drummer Jacopo Campi.

Another one could be easily recognized in the genuine essentiality of their sound, which seems to avoid any kind of bombastic frills, giving a remarkable role to the voice of the skilled vocalist (and songwriter... ) Ally: she gives a lot of bodies of evidence of their ability in interpreting emotional lyrics, even if maybe we have to admit that her voice is still too much unripe and seductive for certain forms of provocative sung poetry... even if sheâ??s really good in singing some ravishing lyrics (it seems she got possessed by an undefined devil when interpreting Salomè â?“ a song inspired by the notorious literary character, finely depicted by Oscar Wilde â?“ , the nice Point Of View or Giblets Of Sorrow, we couldnâ??t say she �s already comparable to renowned female singers such as Patti Smith or Allison Shaw... but we could reasonably expect sheâ??s going to improve and extend her vocal "drama" skills little by little! She has also shown her convincing personality as a musician as well, even when she interprets Jingle (just a sort of funny divertssment in order to relieve the heavy and sometimes obsessive atmospheres of a gothic record... ). This debut album is so persuading and well-crafted that we cannot do anything but wishing them a luminous musical pattern even outside the sometimes stingy Italian boundaries! Good luck, folks!