Genre: Experimental / Dark Wave / Neo-classical / Post-industrial / Neo-folk / Neo-rap

01 Malediction
02 Almus Spiritus
03 Betrayed Bride
04 Être
05 Le Destin
06 The White Room

Please note however that on LJD’s My Space website they picked only one subgenre for their music, and it was ‘experimental’, so I will take their word for it. Although since I have some journalistic freedom to make one of my “sub-genro-neologismo-hybridizations” here, I added those for helpful fun as seen above.

Other contemporary post-industrial culture groups with lovely plural French names come to mind with their choice of band name, but not necessarily the music itself mind you, although you never know since influences, references, allusions are so subjective anyways.! Bands names like:

Les Joyeaux de la Princesse [LJDLP] Les Chasseurs de la Nuit Les Sentiers Conflictuels [LSC]

Other bands with a similar abbreviation also come to mind, although still no direct muziko-aesthetik similarity really:

LPD [Legendary Pink dots]

So cast that all aside then. This is really a lovely album! Emerging from Varese, Vasto, Italy, the band members include the very Beautiful AIMAPROJECT: lyrics, concept, voice. and the very Handsome ROBERTO DEL VECCHIO: composition and sounds. This album is on Misty Circles, distributed by Hau Ruck! SPQR, and has the same seven inch sized cover holding the CD inside, similar to the aesthetic format of another phenomenal Misty Circles/HR!SPQR release, Recondita Stripe.

This cover, like the Recondita Stirpe release, is also very striking with its aesthetic graphics of silver ink on black construction paper, and the acute choice of a collective militant quasi-feminist image on the cover will surely endure as representational substance amongst a neo-folk or dark-wave collection.

Here is what their My Space profile says about About Les Jumeaux Discordants:

“Les Jumeaux Discordants is a project born in 2005 by the union of two pre-existent projects: THE LAST HOUR by Roberto Del Vecchio and AIMAPROJECT. The first is a strictly musical project; the second is born in 1996 and it works in various expressive fields: poetry, photography, music and multimedia. Aimaproject comes from neofolk and she works with many musical projects. Les Jumeaux Discordants’ project presupposes a strong interaction between poetry, image and music. There’s even a bent for the cinematographic transposition of the visionary poems, about the various range of the human feelings. Nevertheless, Les Jumeaux Discordants is ascension, it is the conscience of earthly, a conscience which is turned to the overcoming of the human miseries, made by the unique instruments which are still free: mind and spirit.”

And on AIMAPROJECT’s My Space page is the following information:

Influences: Diamanda Galàs - Current 93 - The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud - Coil - Neofolk - Industrial - Experimental

“Born in 1996 as photographic and poetic project it works periodically in different expressive fields. Aimaproject worked with Vinz (Calle della Morte),Wutanes Heer, Loris Antoniazzi (Bartòk) and Icydawn.”

The Review:

01. “Malediction” begins with a rather brief quiet introductory throbbing electronic drone, and then breaks out suddenly into a sensual mix which includes a menacing sort of grind at chimey delay-processed baroque keyboard parts abstracted upon to become disfamiliar in their familiarities as sound-patches. The percussion is factory labor type industrial material with vaguely laid-back nuances. Aimaproject’s voice is in French, and the lyrics are reprinted in French inside the cover. When she stops singing a chorus with another grinding repetitive glistening tremolo re-emphasizes another skin to the intensity already there at the beginning. Perhaps this song ends a bit too quickly with some simple childlike glistening keyboards riffs.

02. “Almus Spiritus”. This text is by Sallustio, and is from De coniuratione Catilinae 66-62 a.C. The song begins with a witchy-like 4-AD hypno-groove ala 80’s horror movie soundtrack themes again amidst the same delayed-processing, abstracted-upon keyboard neobaroque harpsichord/dulcimer sounding motifs. The beat is tribally yet urbanely bass heavy accenting the beginning of “iambic pentameter” found in poetry, and her poetic skills represent themselves here as an expressionism. Aimaproject’s recitation is in a quasi-childhood flashback-like bad-girl Italian accent in neo-goth-rap style and is sung in Latin. The lyrics are reproduced inside the cover. These musical elements cut in and cut out very effectively for a passionate song. [In this song there are samples of what I hear to be massif crowds cheering as the credits list a sample taken from Triumph des Wilens, 1934, the famous propaganda film by Leni Reifenstahl].

03. “Betrayed Bride”, the first song in English, and here are Aimaproject’s lyrics as printed inside the album.

“On an old rocking-chair
betrayed bride
you receive the dust of years
in the lace of your wedding dress
no more white
your future
reflected in the blade of a knife
awaits
for the treacherous lover’s preaches

Madness
betrayed bride
has deformed your face
limpid and vicious slaver’s stalactites
go down slowly
from your mouth:
wish of blood
dissatisfied
for years

but your soul will rise higher, higher
I feel your soul
rising higher
I feel your soul rising
higher, higher
I feel your soul rising
higher, higher
higher

Your knife will cut
deep wounds
of hate and revenge,
while your soul will rise
higher
no, it’s a lie,
you won’t rise so higher, higher,
higher, higher, higher, higher, higher,
higher, higher,

but you’ll cast in the hell of your soul.”

Obviously this is a charmingly appropriate showcase for the poetic talents of Aimaproject as well! And the Diamanda Galas and Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud influences shine forth and rise higher in this song as well. The song opens with a church organ drone befitting for a “Betrayed bride”. Her voice is echoey like in a large cathedral. Then the organ gets huge and louder and emulates ‘rising’. There seem to be some buried male chanting in the mix at this point as well. Chimes accent a few moments lower in the mix. The cadences seem influenced by Bach’s organ music. It is a sinister song in its intensity. The organs get discordant and clustered as it ends with her echoing, delay-processed voice.

04. “Etre” is sung and French, and begins quietly with some throbbing yet shimmery weaving keyboard drones low in the mix, then the appearance of a louder drone simultaneous with a chime of sorts. A very eerie tubularbells-like, harpsichord-like, metal-stringed, chimey motif ala horror movie soundtracks like Phantasm or early Dead can Dance records serpentinely glides its way through the song with some bass note progressions in sync with balmy orchestral percussion with reverb lower in the mix. Aimaproject whispers. And there are back-up vocals of hers that are long and drawn out back-up harmonies. Then the minimalist two drones that begun the song with a higher sine wave type sound end the song as it fades and drones away. Very effective and cool song!

05. “Le Destin” uses a poem by Gerard de Nerval, Les Chimeres, 1853, sung in French, yet has the attitudinal tone of an Italian badgirl princess fusing neo-rap and neo-folk dark-wave together, yet it works really really well! The song begins again with that eerie creeping witchcraftian motif growing in volume as it develops amongst a bass drone below, bell-like piano with echoey chime accents on the downbeat. Then really above is a really wicked trancy motif similar yet different to the others. And best yet is the chord progressions in the bass that are right out of Beethoven’s late great piano sonatas! This song is really solid, sexy, passionate, intense, eerie, and wicked!

06. “The White Room” is the name of the studio this album was recorded in, but also the name of this final song on the album. This title also rings a cheeky bell as a reference since the Black Sun Productions’ former studio was named “The Golden Room.” Although I have no idea if that relation is intentional. Song begins with some old school analogue synth sound with some cool distortion noise effects. The chime comes in again to mark some downbeats, and another factory-labour type industrial beat moves along at an andante pace ala early Portishead perhaps. An acoustic wind tunnel-sounding like fusion with a dark-wave 80-ish sounding synth-patch marks a two note up-and-down part, and then later some sustained notes in a minor key for a very ‘noir’ bent. Some echoey psychedelic noodling motifs appear here and there up top more faintly in the mix. This action then fades out a bit. The song stops in a silent pause in the middle of the third minute of the song, and this ‘silence’ moves on ambiguously as I waited for maybe a ‘hidden track” to occur. Then at the middle of the sixth minute, a very low rumbling drone like in a drippy tunnel creeps in by itself as it grows, and then it’s Aimaproject talking rather candidly and naturally. Both her voice ala antique radio microphone whisper effect and the drone are heavily processed to echo acoustically. Then a creeping coagulation of strings make a brief appearance. The drone comes in and out marking the silence of a cavernous environment. Aimaproject continues her talking alone, and then that initial drone comes back in like a ghost and fades out with her. “The white room” then ends at nine minutes and eleven seconds.

Achtung!!!: This is a ‘must-have’ for special-collectors of Italo-neo-folk, especially if one collects Misty Circles, Hau Ruck!, and HR! SPQR records!