There's a reason editors don't let writers see the one-sheets that come with CDs: to keep us away from their toxic levels of hyperbole and PR-lackey New-speak. So potent are these materials, merely perusing one paragraph red-lines the hype meter, which leads to our failing the weekly objectivity screening and the predetermined penalty: answering angry emails from Nine Inch Nails fans we dissed two years ago.
So before I even bother filling the cup, this is my admission of guilt: I read the press release for this Liaisons Dangereuses record, and I actually responded to the first line: "this is probably the most highly anticipated electronic CD reissue of all times," mentally entering in the obvious 10.0 it most certainly deserved. Whacked out of my skull on propaganda, I didn't even think for a second about what else could be considered a highly anticipated electronic reissue (Derrick May's debut full-length, an Arthur Russell singles collection-- even Stockhausen's Hymnen come to mind), nor did I even listen to Liaisons Dangereuses before buying in. I mean, if DJ Hell is spinning it, who am I to disagree?
While Hit Thing's tag line is ridiculous, there's plenty of aural evidence to place this mysterious artifact high on any historian's list, dating from a crucial juncture in the development of electronic music in Europe: the dawn of the eighties. "Mystere dans le Brouillard" has a heavy Eurotrash throb-- fashioned by Chrislo Haas (ex-DAF) and Beate Bartel (ex-Mania D.)-- with thrusting French grunts from relatively unknown singer, Krishna Goineau. The synthesizers glisten like piss on broken wine bottles in a dark corridor of Le Mètro, alongside the roar of an oncoming train, approaching fast. The track that's most often spun on dancefloors, "Los Niños del Parque", squirms like Giorgio Moroder squeezing into some tight leather pants slathered with black tar heroin, dark and foreboding as the peculiar German-Spanish patois of Goineau mingles with feminine mewls and yelps.
At times, the group fuse together clashing musical fashions into surprisingly stylish cuts almost too incredible to believe. On "Etre Assis ou Danser", they sound like Damo Suzuki doing white lines, fronting Taco, injecting some street-meth, squawking sax into the track. Sometimes they echo similar work from their peers in Cabaret Voltaire, over on the British Isles. On a track like "Aperitif de la Mort", Liaisons Dangereuses are incredibly menacing, as they take the spoken word moments of the Cosmic Couriers and rub some of Neubaten's scrap metal along their unwashed armpits, as Goineau babbles like Alan Vega, slobbering wine through the streets of Paris.
"Peut Etre-Pas" could be next in line for the Disco Not Disco series, falling somewhere between classic Yello and lesser-knowns recently excavated from the early days of electro. The bass is rubbery, like one of Mister Fantastic's condoms, the vocals squalid and bizarre; you can see why this would lace the sets of Carl Craig, Derrick May, and the current crop of electroclash spinners. Twenty years on, Liaisons Dangereuses' only album proves they were way ahead of their time and its hot fashion sense.
