“Ennio Morricone is a kind of tribute I suppose, albeit one that is firmly placed within the boundaries of Les Georges Lenningrad’s sonic rules. I should also point out that there’s a lot of screaming.”
“Ennio Morricone is a kind of tribute I suppose, albeit one that is firmly placed within the boundaries of Les Georges Lenningrad’s sonic rules. I should also point out that there’s a lot of screaming.”
Les Georges Leningrad – Sangue Puro
(Kunkurrent/ http://www.tomlab.com/)
Bonkers, this Les Georges Leningrad lot, and certainly not an outfit whose work you should be drinking your late night cocoa to. The back of this CD tells us, “Petrochemical Rock outfit Les Georges Leningrad just laid a bat’s egg. It’s called Sangue Puro”. Well, there you go.
The band’s new offspring is represented in the opening track, six minutes of grating electronic dementia accompanied by strident drumming that is challenging but accessible, in a way early Cluster records are. Skulls in the Closet is full on screeching trashy dance, held together by an elemental harsh keyboard riff and topped by some very painful sounding vocal whining. Scissorhands is all low cunning and elemental in feel, once more featuring the girl who has evidently just escaped from a detention centre. Yet again the Cluster comparisons are relevant – albeit a Cluster revamped for the new century. Ennio Morricone is a kind of tribute I suppose, albeit one that is firmly placed within the boundaries of Les Georges Lenningrad’s sonic rules. I should also point out that there’s a lot of screaming.
I presume you are all “getting the picture” now?
Eli Eli Lamma Sabachtani is a tribal chant whilst Mammal Beats is a great slab of primal rock and roll, Bow Wow Wow style, albeit helped with the cries of elephants and tigers. Sleek Answer seems far too clean on first listen, but wait, ah, there’s a bonkers declamation by the girl singer, so we are okay. Suddenly things get weirder with increasingly dissonant synth breaks. Mange Avec Tes Doigts is a Neanderthal scream-athon whilst Lonely Lonely is a Pere Ubu style stomp interspersed with acid guitar.
Finally we have the 10 minutes of The Future for Less. This track can be described as experimental in the truest sense of the word, harking back as it does to very early Tangerine Dream or Conny Schnitzler solo LPs. It’s actually the best track on here as I suppose it is given time to explore its “inner self”.
There you go. I’m quite exhausted after that. Pass me a Mozart “greatest hits” LP will you?
Words: Richard Foster