Borja Flames // Nuevo Medievo LP

スペイン出身フランス在住の実験ポップ作家Borja Flamesが、2022年5月にフランス・パリのサイケデリックレーベルMuraillesからリリースした最新レコードです。

80年代イベリアポストパンクの影響を感じる実験ポップ10曲を収録。DLコード付属。

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 Text by Les Disques Du Festival Permanent:

"He has three brains, a thousand lives, past or parallel, and his name is Borja Flames. Spanish, Parisian, Burgundian, cosmonaut, we don’t know anymore.

His head is that of a pope, a king, a lion, a faun or a melancholic centaur. He is well dressed, with pot holes and beard : Merovingian. We knew him in June and Jim of which he was the southern face (the northern hemisphere being Marion Cousin), a duo recently transfigured under the name of Catalina Matorral, real electronic pastoral.

We saw him reshuffle his cards for the first time in 2016 with Nacer Blanco, the first album under his name, whose tipsy clocks, totems like the Tower of Pisa and bony madrigals evoked Moondog, Robert Wyatt and the Postman Cheval, one inside the other, helter-skelter.

After which Rojo Vivo (2018) a blend of pale house and tenebrous preachings made us fear and pleasure and dance.

Nuevo Medievo which appears today (Les disques du Festival Permanent / Murailles Music) is even more beautiful, more striking. From the very beginning, sung on tiptoe, the silvery voice with robotic effects on a synthetic bedside rug spiked with cymbals makes us feel bareheaded in a vast cabinet of stars, we are captivated. There are laser beams, oracle lyrics with vocoder. Paul Loiseau, the Morse drummer, makes the kitchen set sound like an orchestra of stoned calculators, then Borja Flames accelerates the record’s pulse with the diction of a fed-up TV news anchor before a jungle background until Marion Cousin and Rachel Langlais make everything capsize, she of saturnian vocalization, she of a strangely regulated synth.

Then on, the hits fall here, there, everywhere, real ones, a shower of asteroids.

Negro Negro is suave, mysterious, moving, as surprising as a kiss we no longer expect. We would gladly listen to her only but then comes Magnetismo making us giddy with joy. Then Marioneta, dry and airy as a Sign O’The Times period Prince, which one could dance to endlessly, even alone, head tucked under arm. Nuevo Medievo moves this way throughout, stiff and groovy, cerebral but exploding with dreamy tumors. Powerfully entertaining, filled with odd rhythms, computer choirs, keyboards that slide and are slippery. Nuevo Medievo is a bit reminiscent of the synth-wave scene and 80s Iberian post-punk. It also evokes lo-fi versions of Franco Battiato‘s panoramic SF hits from the album No Time No Space (far away worlds, sound research, fat refrains), Arthur Russel disco, or even Porque te vas, yes yes, Sade, Motown B-sides played at the IRCAM one evening of blunt slackness, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrel in a full-on slow dance under the anachronistic neon lights of a chicha bar or Blade Runner rushes with the Miami Vice original soundtrack.

If Nuevo Medievo, like all of music loving cannibal Borja Flames’ records, summons a certain number of other artists, it does so to organize unexpected meetings between them, and to dissect each one in a scientific, erotic, amorous and gastronomic impulse before freeing himself from them and drawing in all the diagonals of authentically unheard features. Throw him a party."

Artist : Borja Flames

Label : Les Disques Du Festival Permanent