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CD
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BORNBAD 178CD
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Summer of love: they weren't around for the first, they've studied the second, and they're planning the next. Bryan's Magic Tears release their fourth album, Smoke and Mirrors, on Born Bad. The famed pupil-dilated Parisian shit-stirrers usually have a way of demolishing compositions in style when they go live. They'll have their work cut out for them with these new tracks bricked up in studio with Marc Portheau. Still a thing on previous records, 4AM (BORNBAD 108CD) and Vacuum Sealed (BORNBAD 146CD), their garage/noise legacy fades away, not denied though. Benjamin Dupont (guitar/vocals) collaborated with Lauriane Petit (bass/vocals) on four tracks, and recorded each instrument for this unabashed pop album. This confusing specimen will rave about fashionable shoegaze oldies while admitting a kink for All Saints. Aptly named, this new album pokes fun at stadium music while respecting its codes. Looks and sounds like Shaun Ryder had eaten Liam Gallagher, shamelessly churning out hits, leaning on a well-built wall of sound, held together by Raphaël Berrichon and Nicolas Boursier (guitars). The record heavily features that typical '90s shuffle beat, with which Bryan was already flirting, but they're an item now. Two-thirds of the tracks have that groove on. Lauriane and Benjamin offer matching vocal delivery, alternating rhythmic phrases crafted like riffs, and sweet dragging harmonies. This record offers a plump sound, tailor-made to spread arms, bob your head, and level the ground in festivals. Smoke and Mirrors ends with "Lady D," a clever dunce's essay on a rare subject. Went for the kill with acoustic guitar intro, strings on the chorus, warm heavy-hearted vocals, flanger on the drums when it's time to light the lighters, and put spoons on top. Because yes, it's still music to take drugs to make music to take drugs to listen to music.
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LP
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BORNBAD 178LP
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LP version. Summer of love: they weren't around for the first, they've studied the second, and they're planning the next. Bryan's Magic Tears release their fourth album, Smoke and Mirrors, on Born Bad. The famed pupil-dilated Parisian shit-stirrers usually have a way of demolishing compositions in style when they go live. They'll have their work cut out for them with these new tracks bricked up in studio with Marc Portheau. Still a thing on previous records, 4AM (BORNBAD 108CD) and Vacuum Sealed (BORNBAD 146CD), their garage/noise legacy fades away, not denied though. Benjamin Dupont (guitar/vocals) collaborated with Lauriane Petit (bass/vocals) on four tracks, and recorded each instrument for this unabashed pop album. This confusing specimen will rave about fashionable shoegaze oldies while admitting a kink for All Saints. Aptly named, this new album pokes fun at stadium music while respecting its codes. Looks and sounds like Shaun Ryder had eaten Liam Gallagher, shamelessly churning out hits, leaning on a well-built wall of sound, held together by Raphaël Berrichon and Nicolas Boursier (guitars). The record heavily features that typical '90s shuffle beat, with which Bryan was already flirting, but they're an item now. Two-thirds of the tracks have that groove on. Lauriane and Benjamin offer matching vocal delivery, alternating rhythmic phrases crafted like riffs, and sweet dragging harmonies. This record offers a plump sound, tailor-made to spread arms, bob your head, and level the ground in festivals. Smoke and Mirrors ends with "Lady D," a clever dunce's essay on a rare subject. Went for the kill with acoustic guitar intro, strings on the chorus, warm heavy-hearted vocals, flanger on the drums when it's time to light the lighters, and put spoons on top. Because yes, it's still music to take drugs to make music to take drugs to listen to music.
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CD
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BORNBAD 146CD
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That year, the night lasted five months in a row. Every day, when Benjamin Dupont woke up, the sun had been below the horizon for hours. Between 10pm and 4am, locked up secretly in Studio S**** with Marc Portheau, they piled up guitars, turned over amps, chopped over riffs, simplified arrangements and arbitrated. In the early morning, Lauriane Petit sees Benjamin coming back as she leaves to work. Without a word, he lies down. The sun pulls on his eyelids while, in his head, the journey continues: the pieces of music he recorded all night long slip into his dreams. There was no need for drugs to record Vacuum Sealed. The intensity of the ten songs that compose the album was enough to make the rest of the world disappear. The music is so massive, its presence so thick, that after a month of work, Benjamin and Marc couldn't even talk to each other. One of the cornerstones of their generation, made by musicians who also have -- or had -- a foot in the Villejuif Underground, Pleasure Principle, Bisous de Saddam or Dame Blanche... Like all great albums, it opens with a screaming introduction, "Greeting From The Space Boys". The band goes from one breathtaking track to another ("Excuses" sung by Lauriane like a Kim Deal composition, "Sad Toys" or the paroxysm of dancing melancholia, "Pictures Of You" or the best guitar riff ever played with a vibrato) before hanging on a thread. At this point of the record, one could believe that Bryan's Magic Tears is the gifted son of The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream. In 1991, this side of the album would have been recorded by a British band and released by Creation. After showing off the muscles on one album side, Benjamin Dupont digs a little deeper into his own veins and transfigures his band's music. They've been mistaken for drugged-out wankers, a band that makes big noise because they have three guitars on stage, slackers singing nonsense in false English. The B-side of Vacuum Sealed features three autobiographical pop songs with absolutely impeccable lyrics and melodies. In "Tuesday", "Isolation" and "Always", despite the drum machines and the false air of lightness, it's the Smiths' fan who speaks. One last display of overpowering production later -- "Superlava" -- and there it is: you thought Bryan's Magic Tears were taking drugs to make music to take drugs to. In fact, they do the opposite. They compose a repertoire that will outlive them, songs you can already imagine in the mouths and on the fingers of the future generations that will rediscover this marvelous album. One of the guitar classics of the early '20s. LP version includes download code.
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LP
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BORNBAD 146LP
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LP version. Includes download code. That year, the night lasted five months in a row. Every day, when Benjamin Dupont woke up, the sun had been below the horizon for hours. Between 10pm and 4am, locked up secretly in Studio S**** with Marc Portheau, they piled up guitars, turned over amps, chopped over riffs, simplified arrangements and arbitrated. In the early morning, Lauriane Petit sees Benjamin coming back as she leaves to work. Without a word, he lies down. The sun pulls on his eyelids while, in his head, the journey continues: the pieces of music he recorded all night long slip into his dreams. There was no need for drugs to record Vacuum Sealed. The intensity of the ten songs that compose the album was enough to make the rest of the world disappear. The music is so massive, its presence so thick, that after a month of work, Benjamin and Marc couldn't even talk to each other. One of the cornerstones of their generation, made by musicians who also have -- or had -- a foot in the Villejuif Underground, Pleasure Principle, Bisous de Saddam or Dame Blanche... Like all great albums, it opens with a screaming introduction, "Greeting From The Space Boys". The band goes from one breathtaking track to another ("Excuses" sung by Lauriane like a Kim Deal composition, "Sad Toys" or the paroxysm of dancing melancholia, "Pictures Of You" or the best guitar riff ever played with a vibrato) before hanging on a thread. At this point of the record, one could believe that Bryan's Magic Tears is the gifted son of The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream. In 1991, this side of the album would have been recorded by a British band and released by Creation. After showing off the muscles on one album side, Benjamin Dupont digs a little deeper into his own veins and transfigures his band's music. They've been mistaken for drugged-out wankers, a band that makes big noise because they have three guitars on stage, slackers singing nonsense in false English. The B-side of Vacuum Sealed features three autobiographical pop songs with absolutely impeccable lyrics and melodies. In "Tuesday", "Isolation" and "Always", despite the drum machines and the false air of lightness, it's the Smiths' fan who speaks. One last display of overpowering production later -- "Superlava" -- and there it is: you thought Bryan's Magic Tears were taking drugs to make music to take drugs to. In fact, they do the opposite. They compose a repertoire that will outlive them, songs you can already imagine in the mouths and on the fingers of the future generations that will rediscover this marvelous album. One of the guitar classics of the early '20s.
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CD
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BORNBAD 108CD
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Remember those moth-eaten American bands on unreachable Midwest labels that, in the mid-1990s, would drop choruses that would make the Smashing Pumpkins green with envy, with the crummiest sound in the history of electricity? Maybe not. Well, Bryan's Magic Tears could have been one of them. This project launched four years ago by Benjamin Dupont (Dame Blanche), which features members and ex-members of La Secte Du Futur and Marietta, indeed has it all to occupy this niche, which, by the way, has quite fallen into disuse these days: toxic melodies, guitars oscillating between whiplashes and caresses, ghostly sonorities, and a convoluted name referring to some obscure Parisian acid dealer. But wait: this is not about a vain stylistic exercise put together by some gifted kids who fantasize about a time they missed, nor a sad revivalist meeting of old farts who still haven't gotten over turning 40. If listening to Bryan's Magic Tears brings the '90s to mind, it's not because of the sound, but because of a state of mind that was peculiar to the time and to this particular moment in adolescence, when the last illusions aroused by the fall of the Berlin Wall were slowly fading away, when the dark clouds of the first Gulf War were piling up; this carefree, jaded spleen perfectly depicted in Gregg Araki's films or in songs by Sebadoh, Beat Happening, or Nirvana -- or even in this famous line from Lou Reed's "Romeo Had Juliet": "It's hard to give a shit these days". A state of mind that remains pure, intact, limpid in Bryan's Magic Tears music, free from any posture or cynicism, at the service of insane titles which made their first album (2016). And you find it again today, even more intense and precise on 4 AM, a collection of insane hits -- "Ghetto Blaster", "CEO", "Changes", the whole album could actually be mentioned. A record made for those clear and cool days of spring when everything suddenly looks brighter, clearer, and more intense. An obvious, indestructible, lunar, romantic, arrogant, phlegmatic, disillusioned record. In short, a record that makes you wish you were 18 again. CD version comes as a digipack.
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Artist |
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Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
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LP
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BORNBAD 108LP
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LP version. Includes download code. Remember those moth-eaten American bands on unreachable Midwest labels that, in the mid-1990s, would drop choruses that would make the Smashing Pumpkins green with envy, with the crummiest sound in the history of electricity? Maybe not. Well, Bryan's Magic Tears could have been one of them. This project launched four years ago by Benjamin Dupont (Dame Blanche), which features members and ex-members of La Secte Du Futur and Marietta, indeed has it all to occupy this niche, which, by the way, has quite fallen into disuse these days: toxic melodies, guitars oscillating between whiplashes and caresses, ghostly sonorities, and a convoluted name referring to some obscure Parisian acid dealer. But wait: this is not about a vain stylistic exercise put together by some gifted kids who fantasize about a time they missed, nor a sad revivalist meeting of old farts who still haven't gotten over turning 40. If listening to Bryan's Magic Tears brings the '90s to mind, it's not because of the sound, but because of a state of mind that was peculiar to the time and to this particular moment in adolescence, when the last illusions aroused by the fall of the Berlin Wall were slowly fading away, when the dark clouds of the first Gulf War were piling up; this carefree, jaded spleen perfectly depicted in Gregg Araki's films or in songs by Sebadoh, Beat Happening, or Nirvana -- or even in this famous line from Lou Reed's "Romeo Had Juliet": "It's hard to give a shit these days". A state of mind that remains pure, intact, limpid in Bryan's Magic Tears music, free from any posture or cynicism, at the service of insane titles which made their first album (2016). And you find it again today, even more intense and precise on 4 AM, a collection of insane hits -- "Ghetto Blaster", "CEO", "Changes", the whole album could actually be mentioned. A record made for those clear and cool days of spring when everything suddenly looks brighter, clearer, and more intense. An obvious, indestructible, lunar, romantic, arrogant, phlegmatic, disillusioned record. In short, a record that makes you wish you were 18 again.
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