When the Dark does what the Dark does best, it's Dark Supreme! This shameful paraphrase of the Deathstars doesn't necessarily set the tone of the Down the Drain EP... neither does the artist's presentation of his work: "a shitty guy stuck in the past doing shitty music and terrible VHS video from a shitty city". The city in question is Besançon. As for the rest, Jérôme Josselin aka Joss is also behind the Impure Muzik label, guitarist with instrumental rock band Féroces and a member of early 2000s screamo band Gantz. With Dark Supreme, his darker side and his cinephilia are expressed through hypnotic, captivating electronic music with multiple references.
We must take a second look at the artist's communication: while it may seem parodic in its overplay of gothitude, and absolutely delectable, the music is no joke (or else it would be a killing one). From the very titles of the tracks, there's a declaration of love to more or less independent cinema: the vampire children of Morse, the ritual hallucinations and mourning of Midsommar, the Mad Max fans and post-apocalyptic weirdos hipsters of Bellflower... or even Jessica Jones (before you laugh, go and see David Tennant's performance: Kilgrave Made me do It, we would have gladly obeyed him too). The consequence of this cinephilia is a music that is inevitably expressive, communicative and narrative, where samples are used to colour the atmospheres with all their pessimism.
In the Dark You Can See Everything's gothic vocals, which are at once raw wails and obscure incantations, and the opaque layers that envelop us, along with the oppressive industrial rhythm, capture our attention: creatures of the night prowl around, carrying their despair with them. Between post-punk and darksynth (God is LSD and its visceral explosions of rage), hallucinatory atmospheric wanderings (A James Bond Car for Drunk), flashes of shoegaze, cold wave and 80s melancholy (Kilgrave Made me do It and its The Cure-esque take on hardcore punk, and vice versa) and the thick, crushing bass of the menacing Nevermind What's Been Selling, It's What You're Buying and this return to a colder, more industrial sound that cites Fight Club more than Fugazi, Dark Supreme varies the pleasures and shades of black. There's never a dull moment for the listeners, captive in a spider's web of spleen and synthetic darkness.
Down the Drain is an EP that fascinates and attracts in more ways than one: first of all, there's the ultra-goth second degree that amuses us so much, then all the quotes and references to the world of images moving on a screen that are always fun to spot... But above all, there's the music. Dark Supreme alternates between the poignant and the threatening, the organic and the industrial, the nod to the past and a definite modernity in the way it borrows and mixes genres, from the neon-filled rains of a cyberpunk future to the greyish rains of the 80s. Down the Drain is a curiosity which, with just five tracks, is rich and seductive, even addictive. So drown yourself in the cold nothingness with him.
