Depending on the line-up, night owls don't always look quite the same. For a minimalist synth punk / coldwave evening, goths in the République district of Paris are flamboyant: bold mullets, conquering moustaches, glitters... We've come to dance at l'Alimentation Générale, one of the many neighborhood's nightlife mecca, which is hosting its eleventh “Underground Disease Night” with a line-up made just for us: coldness, melancholy, synths... The Greeks of Dramachine, Montpellier's Larsovitch and Franco-Belarusian Tout Debord were on the program, and we went along to discover the icy new blood on stage.
Tout Debord
We immediately get on board with Tout Debord. The young artist hasn't even launched his music yet, and we're already falling for him. A slim figure in a too large suit, a T-shirt tucked into pants under a shimmering belt, dark glasses despite the obscurity: the look is spot-on. With his new wave and post-punk influences, Tout Debord kicks off the evening with his deep, monotone voice. We don't know if he's desperate or just jaded, waddling along without much conviction, reciting his lyrics in a grey mood, but we can't resist it. You can tell this guy hasn't come to heat up the room. Under the red and green spotlights, in a late-night but still early-night atmosphere, Tout Debord seems to come straight from a David Lynch film. The artist masters the discrepancy: he seems neither in the right place, nor at the right time, without us really knowing what could be the place and time of this improbable, lost-looking spectre. The attitude is in keeping with the spleen he exudes, the sepulchral voice piercing through a veil of reverberation, while minimalist rhythmic programming is already shaking a few bones in the audience. The tracks have names like People and Ghosts or It's Raining: poems about depression and autumn. To start the evening, music that tells us to give up, that exudes renunciation, immediately puts us in the right frame of mind: there's no point anyway, in the end you die, so who cares, good night.
LARSOVITCH
Yet there are still battles to be fought. You only have to discover Larsovitch's ardour to realize this. It's quite amusing to see him placed between a project with Belarusian origins and a Greek band, as if to better encircle him with the influences he loves so much. Larsovitch grabs his audience by the gut and never lets go, playing tracks from his two EPs one after the other. The change in atmosphere is as radical as the music itself: the temperature rises, the tracks penetrate, the rhythms become frenetic. Gone are the wandering spectres and their moods; there's a whiff of revolution in the air, something physical. On stage, Larsovitch seems possessed, embodying his outbursts with rage. His minimalist, synthetic music oozes punk energy. The audience sweats. The new tracks are a hit: the heady melodies of Légions Perdues and Obossrannyi Gueroï, the aggressiveness of Xenomorfos, the cathartic heaviness of Normal'No... they work like a charm, especially when performed with such fervor.
On stage, Larsovitch drips, Larsovitch shouts, Larsovitch invectives, giving his music a new power. We're seduced by the artist's generosity, who gives of himself without counting and even fights with time, seeming to negotiate at the end of the set to offer us more: “Come on, we've still got time for one last one?". After his set, and while Dramachine is setting they gear, we realize that the timing is getting tight, but we're not going to complain: not only have we had a good dose of furious synths, but the event only indicated a very vague timetable anyway, so all's well!
DRAMACHINE
The Athenian trio also moves fast. Yet here again, the mood changes from the very first moments of the concert. After Larsovitch's intensity and frown, three beaming smiles take the stage. We're not going to lie to you, we're a little worried: are we going to have to stop pouting? Hopefully not. Fortunately, Dramachine's music may have that punk fever in it, but the gothic influences give it an angst that reassures us: just because they look nice and the audience's wiggling doesn't mean we're going to get sunburned! The voices of Eleni Mandy and Lisa Klez answer each other, while analog synths add their retro-futuristic touch to the guitar and bass.
Like the rest of the evening's performers, Dramachine mixes eras and influences, giving their post-punk breezes pop curves or the bite of sharp synths. We're seduced by the energy they exude, a desire to create and have fun that's infectious, a playfulness that's even reflected in the band's self-deprecating humor: “three mortals trying to survive in a world of snake-eating bats, ex boyfriends, extreme weather conditions, self-improvement freaks and low wages”. Surviving all this is done the way they do it: with a few pirouettes and by going for it without looking back too much, on instinct, and by jabbering a few words in French to seduce the audience in five minutes. Paradoxically enough, as the night wore on, the evening brightened up. Over the course of the three concerts, it rain bats and dogs on Paris (Dramachine warned us: extreme weather!), but by the time we left the venue, the skies were clear: after the Tout Debord cold rain and the Larsovitch thunder, Dramachine had chased the clouds away. We're not sure whether to thank them or curse them for that, but they were lovely and their apparent pleasure was shared !
