Yeh, sometimes i actually write stuff. Here’s an example
Antoni Maiovvi - The Thorns of Love (Caravan, 2010)
The third album by Bristol-born, Berlin-based DJ Anton Maiof under his (possibly Italo-disco informed) Antoni Maiovvi alias, “The Thorns of Love” claims kinship with the “overwhelming horror of the stalked… the sound of dimly lit streets where everyone is at risk”. It’s no coincidence that two of his top MySpace friends, juxtaposed next to one another, are John Carpenter and Giorgio Moroder.
It might be conditioning coming from someone born in the early 80s and who therefore obviously wasn’t there, but about half of the album does indeed seem to conjure up imagery of a stylised Son of Sam-era New York, all discotheque patrons dancing in between glances over their shoulder. Opener “This Is the Beast” certainly fits the description: maintaining its tension without much resolution or respite, the relentlessness of its propulsive double-time bassline, monolithic beat and odd, sinister synth tone clusters lends an atmosphere of paranoia. And “Class Dagger”, with its one-note bassline, sequenced arpeggios and horror soundtrack atmospherics, is less creeping dread than adrenalised motion, a climactic chase scene rather than a killer prowling in an alley.
Yet despite the grisly cover art – a bloody hand, encircled with barbed wire, clutching a heart – and occasional hints of the creepy pulses of Riz Ortolani’s Cannibal Holocaust soundtrack, it’s not as grim as some its imagery would suggest. “The Sigh from the Sky Was a Lie Without Doubt” suits its rhyming title, starting with a beat reminiscent of the kind of old school hip-hop when rappers would still go over looped breakdown sections from disco records, then erupting into glassy lead synths and anthemic guitar lines. It feels too celebratory, too energetic, and when the original break kicks back in at 6:03, pretty much too funky to be convincingly all that menacing.
“Treason”, meanwhile, is simple piano-based minimalism, with an evolving central motif a little reminiscent of Phil Glass’ “Solo Piano” record; again it’s less brooding and more simply blissful. Closer “Horsehead Blue” takes a different tack again: over an insistent post-punk beat and panoramic synths, Maiovvi adds his own detached vocals, sounding somewhere between Ian Curtis and David Byrne in a storm drain.
While the horror angle might be a bit unrepresentative of the contents as a whole, this is nonetheless a fine record, and should find support among both straight-up disco aficionados and those who like their dancefloor fodder to balance atmospherics, melody and smart composition alike.