Music: Wiggly Air – Deafkids, My Heart, An Inverted Flame, it foot, it ears, FRANTX, Tom Waits and Massive Attack
Electro blipmares from Paris. The French/Italian four-piece FRANTX sound decidedly more contemporary than does it foot, it ears, but are similarly disorienting, likely because I don’t speak French. They’re super-cute and vaguely anxious, technicolor techno masking what seems to be a disaffected detachment. All four members provide (processed) vocals and synth textures on their debut IDUTYDU (LP, download from Carton Records May 22), although there’s also occasional acoustic guitar and tuba as well. A slow chaos ensues, as on “Pingu Trauma,” in which a robot sing-a-long interrupts what sounds like a cartoon ensconced in a blanket of scorn. There are little melodies at times, but there’s not often much going on in song form. Still, it manages to keep a poppish feel aloft, like comic sans illbient. The lyrics might point a different direction, but that said, the album’s final track, “Fly Communication,” delivered in accented English, is about our inability to converse with bugs, even when they say they understand. Communication is overrated.