Artist: Lydia Lunch & Philippe Petit
Title: Taste Our Voodoo
Genre: Avant-Garde
Release Date: 6th December 2013
Label: Rustblade
Album Review
This was never going to be easy. Simply seeing the name of Lydia Lunch in a title is enough to put fear down the spine of any reviewer, and when coupled with French avant-garde experimental soundscape explorer Philippe Petit, the fear becomes a dread that spreads like cold fingers. Ms Lunch, for the uninitiated, has been terrorising and bullying musical boundaries since her days in TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS, way back in the mid-seventies in a New York that was enjoying a surge of punk, envelope-pushing and no-wave. Since then she has collaborated like it’s going out of fashion, become a writer, poet and actress, and released a number of solo records that are as slippery to define as they are brave and, at times, baffling. Her co-conspirator here, Mr Petit, has been releasing underground records for the past 30 years, and busies himself as part of a loose collective calling itself STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Bet the cold nights just fly by.
This particular project has been recorded live over the past two and a half years and arranged into four suites, over two CD’s. Daunting. The real question though, is why? It’s a soundtrack without a film, and it begs for visuals as there simply isn’t enough happening to maintain the level of interest it no doubt thinks it deserves. What we have here is a vast expanse of haunting soundscapes, spooky electronic noises and noodling a-plenty, all offset by the unmistakable voice of Lydia Lunch. Part poetry, part sung, there are passages of repetition that work, and whole blocks of time where you just wander off to, perhaps, make a cuppa or put the dishwasher on. When it’s successful it is genuinely creepy, a clinging, cloying paranoia at work throughout, and some dense atmospherics that are reminiscent of DIE FORM or mid-period SWANS (she sounds similar to JARBOE at times). Fearsome when angry, there is also a tendency to be overwrought and there is no escaping the fact that at such times she does sound like South Park’s Eric Cartman. Now try getting THAT image out of your head.
The real problem is identifying who would listen to this more than once, and where. Too intense for background music, too long and complex to take in bite-size portions, it’s obviously meant to be totally immersive. Perhaps a couple of hours lying on your back in the Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern with this blasting out would give it the modern-art avant-garde credentials it craves. But it seems more likely it would mark its time in a rarely visited ante-chamber of said museum, with a big plaque proclaiming how wondrous and clever it is and how much time and effort went into creating it. But no one will care. Because it’s just not interesting enough. Sorry.
Tracklist
01. Voodoo 1
02. Voodoo 2
03. Voodoo 3
04. Voodoo 4
Line-up
Lydia Lunch
Philippe Petit
Website
http://www.lydia-lunch.org / http://www.philippepetit.info
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 5
Sound: 5
Total: 5 / 10
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