Karl Biscuit 'Secret Love' : C/D?

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The cookie has crumbled and the grains have been tumbled out of the aerosol of synth-tone poppery into a dark, dank well where turbulence and torment cling to the talents of Karl like poisonous fungi. Since seeing this singer (pronounced Bisk-wee) in Paris last year, he seems to have undergone an amputation with traumatic side-effects. Adroitly fingered at the time as a Serge Clerc character in 3-D, the accompanying stylised cocktail mannerisms have dried out and what remains is an emotional brainburn where Fairlights blink with a hangover instead of grinning like dumb robots. 'Death', 'Loneliness', 'No Friends', 'Requiem' - with song titles like these you get the idea of the horrorshow on offer, how many ways you can terminate or be terminated is equal to the pleasures of this record. Pleasures ? Hell, yes, but not of the ugly bedsit torment sort. Karl is pretty enough to have aimed for the wide-eyed-innocent end of the synth spectrum with its lure of big bucks. Instead, he's inhabiting the cutting space that both the Human League and Depeche Mode are trying to reach in vain at present. 'Regrets Eternels' is pimple synth-pop lanced until the pus runs. Vampire instrumentation sucks at the neck of linear tunes, foreign textures unfurl and infect the clean kid's ideas. Take a peek at the liner notes and everything makes sense. Aided in sections by Blaine L.Reininger and Honeymoon Killer Marc Hollander, the whole project is filtered through the hemlock hands of Gilles Martin of the great Tuxedomoon. 'Regrets Eternels' is the alternative madness in the method dance"
This text appeared in UK weekly Sounds in 1984

― Baaderoni (Fabfunk), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 13:57 (twenty-two years ago)

one tends to forget how laboriously terrible sub-morley music journalism in the '80s really was.

this was reviewed by wingco in uncut a few months back, who summed it/him up by calling him "the howard jones we never had." it's pretty good, like a spikier thomas leer.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 12 May 2004 14:09 (twenty-two years ago)

six years pass...

I like this shit, it is so mysterious?

― the 'hip' thing nowadays — gay Mormon missionaries (Abbbottt), Sunday, 17 April 2011 17:20 (fifteen years ago)

Wrong punctuation mark there but ---mystery---

― the 'hip' thing nowadays — gay Mormon missionaries (Abbbottt), Sunday, 17 April 2011 17:21 (fifteen years ago)

Dug this out and gave this a listen -- album can be up or down (then again I've heard so many formerly obscure records in this general sonic vein now that I'm a touch spent) but it's often enjoyable.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 18 April 2011 00:37 (fifteen years ago)

Ha! Yes there are so many blogs & c. devoted to the minutiae of this type of music. I think half the appeal for me is he used to be a ballet dancer! idk why but that is really some narrative seal for flavoring this beep-bloop-grunt-angst.

― the 'hip' thing nowadays — gay Mormon missionaries (Abbbottt), Monday, 18 April 2011 00:54 (fifteen years ago)

Hah a thread from my obsessive Crammed / Crepuscule phase.
yeah the album is alright but I guess just having "Regrets Eternels" on mp3 is more than enough. I think he went back to the dance world after releasing this

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Monday, 18 April 2011 08:39 (fifteen years ago)

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