Grotesque Sexuality – “A Spell by Laugh” (demo) review
Grotesque Sexuality is a young band from St. Petersburg, which has appeared in the end of 2008 and has already recorded a demo-release which you can download on the official site of the famous web-label Zorch Factory Records. Musically, GS is a vanguard mixture of coldwave, post-punk, deathrock, no wave. Of course nowadays nobody will be surprised by eclecticism; most of the modern neo-batcave, neo-deathrock bands work between the borders of genres, but GS manages to simultaneously reflect qualities of these genres as they should be and were in the 80-s.
The first track is a cover of «Little Girl», the song of the famous French coldwave/experemental-band Complot Bronswick. According to Complot’s words, they enjoyed the version, and it speaks for itself. The next track is the song where the lyrics are the poem of the Dadaism founder Tristan Tzara, «Mr. Aa The Antiphilosopher», conceptual and musical base of which has pure Dadaistic character and qualities, as it seems to me. Despite the French-English translation there is still an impression that the text is in French. The same I feel while listening to all the tracks, even when Nattsol sings in Russian, and the music also sounds very French-like. The third track – Razrusa Moshenie, this next dada – puzzle, musically and lyrically has become my GS’s favorite one. And the last song is «Заклятие Смехом» with Velimir Khlebnikov’s poetry, perhaps, is the most complicated, emotional and likable song of the demo.
Let’s sum up: Grotesque Sexuality is Dadaism and France, eclecticism and seamlessness, it’s an emotional music for admirers of musical schizophrenia. I hope the number of tracks will be increased and GS won’t move closer to a more modern and adapt sounding but on the contrary, will lose in the vanguard jungle and lead their listeners the same way.
Vadim ‘Bars-Ursula’ Barsov
“Grave Jibes Fanzine”
