#liminanas

Michael Mayer opens with a typically spacious swoon on “Not So Far Away” layering choral and vocal snippets over a shuffling clip-clop beat and panoramic synths. Vertigo’s “That Velvet Circle” builds on the template, adding guitar twang and upping the tempo. Charlotte Jestaedt provides an ethereal lead vocal over a Krautrock chug that rescues Mount Obsidian’s “Ride” from becoming mere Buddha Bar fodder. Golden Bug and The Limiñanas introduce French spoken word and wah-wah guitar into the mix. The real pleasure here is absorbing the skill of Burg’s sequencing, his immaculate control over tempo and atmosphere, his introduction of new elements and the way he foreshadows and circles back to particular motifs. Paulor centers “We” on a repeated strummed guitar riff with a muscular hi-hat and woozy sci-fi synth bass, Mount Obsidian’s second contribution reintroduces choral samples and what sounds like Linn drum runs, Lake turner/WEM/Hand’s “East County Lines” reimagines Can as Calexico.  

As with most compilations of this type there are a couple of relative lags; Sascha Funke’s “In Der Tat” , whilst quite good, disrupts the flow somewhat midway through and The Novotones’ harmonica inflected “Angel of Doomsday” may have been better placed earlier in the mix but these are minor quibbles with what is a carefully plotted road trip through the American desert as imagined by a sensibility nurtured by the stories of Karl May and reflected in the films of Wim Wenders and Percy Adlon. Velvet Desert Music, Volume 2 allows you to close your eyes, feel the hot wind on your face and transport your mind to the great outdoors.  

Not for Seigner the cliché of the breathy French ingénue; singing in French and English, she brings a world-weary insouciance perfectly in tune with the narcotic fuzz of the music. Her tone and mood harks back to her 2007 collaboration with VU influenced French duo, Ultra Orange on which she gave full reign to her professed love for the Stooges, Lou Reed and contemporaries like Mazzy Star.  

Her duet with Bertrand Belin “On Dansait Avec Elle” based on a slowed down ye-ye rhythm works so well because although it brings Gainsbourg to mind, it subverts roles, with Seigner as the knowing lead and Belin following pained and hang dog in her wake. More Charlotte than Serge. Elsewhere there is the motorik drive of “La Brigade des Maléfices” and “Ghost Rider” and the disembodied pop of “Springfield 61” complete with a “La La La” chorus, church bells, tambourines and a warm blanket of fuzz beneath.  

If Diabolique sometimes verges on pastiche the quartet never descend into camp. Seigner has a gravitas that grounds the songs and the band plays it full-blooded building layers of guitars, organs and sitar upon mid-tempo beats to create dense hypnotic fugs. Newcombe’s attention to detail is evident in the production and there are “aha!” moments that reward repeated listening: the percussion sounds and droning guitars on “Un Rituel Inhabituel”, the subtle name checks of The 13th Floor Elevators and the New York Dolls in “Last Picture Show” and the luxuriously analog feel of the entire record.  

L’Epee has produced an album greater than the sum of its myriad of great parts. If Seigner is front and center, Newcombe and the Limiñanas provide her with a filigreed setting. Diabolique is a trip into the underworld from which you will return revitalized and ready for the next leg.