Just imagine, in 2024, having the opportunity to hear Cinema Strange live in France: the lead singer of the cult 90s/2000s deathrock band, who broke up fifteen years ago despite a few dates in 2016 (mainly in Germany), hadn't set foot in Paris since 2008. While the flyer clearly states that it's “Lucas Lanthier and his esteemed colleagues from L.A.”, the scent of nostalgia in the air is unmistakable. We've come to listen to his illustrious bands, Cinema Strange and The Deadfly Ensemble, within the close confines of the Cirque Electrique Anti-Club.
ATHUR J. REPTILIAN
But before that, under the venue's red spotlight, the audience could get into the swing of things with Arthur J. Reptilian, about whom little was known before the performance, except that the man posed with a cigarette up his nose for a promo photo. Tonight, he's sporting a moustache under his snout, which is said to be easier to breathe and requires less balance, but he's also wearing an unlikely tee-shirt listing the world's cats. It's nighttime, and to us they're all gray, a bit like the music of our reptilian comrade, minimalist and moody. He launches his laptop and declaims his lines in a low voice full of reverb. Even if we don't know the artist, the universe seems familiar, and the vocals evoke the cold-wave/post-punk trend from the former Soviet bloc countries (the Byelorussians of Molchat Doma, the Russians of Ploho...), but which would have made a great leap to warm up on the side of sinister Americana à la King Dude. Dazzled by the half-spot, the lizard called Arthur J. wiggles in front of an audience whose legs are visibly tingling, and who are eager to be bludgeoned by the first rhythm box that comes along. The energy is high, the sweat is palpable, and the crowd is clearly happy to be there. From the shadows, we greet the singer's willingness and his little crowd bath at the start of his set, he does what he can to seem involved despite a venue where the technical conditions are still far from luxurious. We'll have to listen again in the studio to get a better idea and better appreciate the quirks of a music that immediately seems more ramshackle and playful, but for the opening of the evening, the contract is fulfilled: those who wanted to stir, stirred, those who preferred to drink, drank.
LUCAS LANTHIER
Scheduled for 10.30pm, the concert got off to a late start: it's the middle of the week and already some of the bats know they won't be able to stay until the end. A shame, considering how rare this event is! We mentioned nostalgia earlier... what about the setlist? Well, it only takes a handful of seconds before we get our first clue, with the sampled “cinema, cinema” announcing Aboriginal Anemia. Legs and Tarpaulin, Unlovely Baby, Catacomb Kittens, Greensward Grey... The bulk of the set is devoted to Cinema Strange tracks, featuring drummer Daniel Walker. The spectral laments of Bruise Animals and the very dark cabaret Horse on the Moor, tracks by The Deadfly Ensemble, calm an increasingly boiling atmosphere. This tortured, offbeat music, somewhere between the lamentations of Sopor Æternus and the gritty energy of Sex Gang Children, is the perfect pretext for Lucas Lanthier's show.
Like possessed, he is at once a storyteller, an actor, a singer and a soul in pain. Mounted on springs (and his emblematic stilettos, of course), he breathes infectious energy into his music, bringing smiles to his audience, as well as to his colleagues (Daniel Munoz on bass, already involved in the reformation of 45 Graves and with CrowJane) and Ashkelon Sain on guitar (Devoured by Flowers, Solara Obscura). Sometimes flayed, sometimes facetious, Lucas Lanthier is as much a vaguely menacing trickster as a tragic figure. It's easy to forget the late hour or the Cirque Electrique sound, which, by letting the drums take up too much space, increases the intensity of this deathrock tenfold, and we're transported back to a time when french bats nodded in the dark to the sounds of Violet Stigmata or Deadchovsky. The Californian artist's appearances, especially in France, are as exceptional as they are atypical, and we had to savor this evening with the awareness of its exceptional nature. We can only hope that the next visit of this mad poet will not be in fifteen years' time.
