Velvet Condom the amazing French-Berliner duo creates a unique aesthetic of cold synth wave with elements of rough, but melodic post punk and shoegaze; with a very contemporary feeling the band ends up with one sound for themselves. 'Stadtgeil' their second full length album is an urban romance that mixes danceable electro-wave elements to darker experimental ones ingeniously. Cyber Muzik for urban Metals!
This album starts very powerful with its noise-pop anthem 'Funeral For Love'reminding some new-gazers as A Place To Burry Strangers with an irresistible cocktail of machines echo drowned guitars and dreamy vocals. Then comes the sick and dark groovy 'Menace', the listener immediately get hit by its martial drum machines mixed with some industrial sound samples à la Depeche Mode (Construction Time era) joined by a droning fat Bass line. This song has nothing to compare with; let's call it a grave rave masterpiece, gloomy and funky and the same time.
After this menacing sophisticated trip the album shows us a more danceable and fresher side with the electro-wave hit 'Rouge City'catching one with an awesome in-your-face French touched bass sequence followed by Nico's suave and melancholic vocals sounding like cybernetic sadness.
Following is the surprisingly Italo-Disco influenced song 'Ice Disco', cold and danceable: that's apparently the bands recipe, and it works perfectly! The über-sexy 'Faint-Hearted'is a brilliant psychedelic-garage- glam track and takes you again by surprise with its heavy Glitteresque guitar riff. This leads us almost to end of these 9 breathtaking songs with 2 remarkable down-tempo pieces: 'A New Fall'a beautiful touching dreamy wave ballad and the very David Lynch-Nick Cave like 'Scars Shine'that majestically closes the album and leaves us totally numbed by the diversity of its emotions. It is astonishing how much work was put into that recording, you need several listens to get every subtle precious detail.