"PREMONITION" (F) January 03
It is said that in the early twenties Salvador Dali and André Breton summoned the Double Nelson with a fear tainted with admiration. Later it was Andy Warhol's turn to announce loud and clear the mental upheaval that the music of Double Nelson was about to present. The solar temple sect got it right since the mass suicide committed by all its members was due to their desire to understand and join the duo from
Nancy in solemn sympathy. Blixa Bargeld and Trent Reznor, admiring the eternal duo, declared, on Sept.
11th around 9.40 a.m, that Double Nelson's time would come in 2003. Benny Hill and Kiri the clown,
long-time friends and spokesmen for the band, have just confirmed the news of their new cd purposefully
entitled "The so sorry spaceman, the so sick spaceman and the noisy shadow vs Double Nelson". Our
friends Double and Nelson have, once more, won by knockout; their sixth and latest album is a triumph
over obscurantism and artistic mindlessness. Furthermore, it is a very nice tribute to Antonin Artaud,
Throbbing Gristle and Nicolas Sarkozy. Anyway, they summed it all up in a home-brewed formula: "Life
made us so". Fellow readers, just draw your own obvious conclusions.(Frédéric Thébault)
"491" (F) February 03
There is something fabulous, phantasmagorical and inextricable about the Double Nelson, a kind of
intangible loose nebula that swirls around their skulls and mesmerizes the listeners at each one of their
gigs (as for each album releasethis one being the sixth one!). It may be due to their "post-electro-industrial-noisy-psychedelic" music which radiates well off the tracks. Or is it the effect of their totally atypical career? Nothing seems to affect their motivation, "joie de vivre" and noodle salad. It may also be explained through their off-catalogue style (Thank you: God or anyone else); or is it a magic formula the duo from Nancy have finally discovered after a few rounds of research, delirium, trips, U-turns, experimentation, and other musical adventures. They have most certainly defeated the warning sign of the Chernobyl cowboy (huh?), pushing further the frontiers of the possible in a guaranteed intersideral trip. "The so sorry spaceman, the so sick spaceman and the noisy shadow vs. Double Nelson" (a.n.d music)With such a title do you expect me to draw another portrait? No, frankly, just fasten your seatbelts, listen andoff you go. Welcome to a disconcerting, yet dizzying universe because it is fundamentally mysterious. Please, Double Nelson, don't you ever leave us alone! (Laurent Zine)
L'HEURE TARD (F) January 03
Writing a review about Double Nelson is a piece of cake; you just have to pick out the terms they use to define their own universe: "suspense, emotion, future, no future, love scenes, submarines, anguish, rhythm, noise, and a kind of personal approach to Jazz except that it's not Jazz at all". Beyond these references I can add a touch of Yello, tribal atmospheres, some noïse and a load of pictures. Is it easy to figure out what they're all about then? Well, yes it is! Apart from the fact that it's not sufficient to prick up your ears; you also have to open your mind, and maybe even give your self up. Moreover, since space is what is lacking most when you are shut away writing a reviewerrr, I must admit that, after listening to their album some thirteen times, I'm still roaming around outer space. (Didier Trumeau)
POSITIVE RAGE (F) January 03
I've always thought that experimentation was entertaining, and, once more, Double Nelson's new album gives proof of this. They offer us a Martian, original music, that is altogether off the trolley and very relaxed. It is a repetitive Suicide-like style enlivened with odd tiny sounds which remind us of the Residents or even Chrome. Their songs rack our minds, entertain us, and take us away for a walk on an unknown planet. Every now and then, a tiny, falsely reassuring pretty female voice can be heard.(It reminds me of Mona Soyok's of Kas Product). The male vocals sound like noisy shadows and are reminiscent of early Cabaret Voltaire. You may have figured out that I like their approach since it enabled me to rediscover what I really love in so-called experimental music - fully accomplished ambience and sound arrangements. Definitely playful! (Sha)
>> see also: Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, The Residents, Chrome or Kas Product.
"LONGUEUR D'ONDES" (F) February 03
Armed with hybrid machines and asthmatic guitars, DN is back for a dynamiting, in due form, of some urban
blues coming straight out of a refuge for little green men on life support. Vs Double Nelson goes back in time, causing its implosion in a miniature big bang studded with pervasive saturation and crammed with weird sound effects. DN urges us to take a schizophrenic ride into a space so condensed that it's close to a suffocating vacuum. (Roland Torres)
"CLUBS ET CONCERTS" (F) January 03
The Post Kas Product sonic duo from Lorraine (somewhere north eastern France), Double Nelson has rattled and crackled from its slag heap since the dawn of the nineties and their "arte povera" manifesto "Those who have done it", a transgressive palimpsest of the gospel according to Suicide. The only oblique hypothesis to the skillful fooling around of the Rita Mitsoukos, Double Nelson, provincial anti-matter, 'rhoneotypes
its makeshift bric-a-brac' (huh-huh?), piling up samplers, synthesizers, rhythm boxes with an astounding doggedness, the logic of which is beyond all understanding and yet will strangely command admiration. 1990, 2003 or 1971, there is no room here for arithmetics, and we know that thanks to Gilles Deleuze, "grass grows from the middle". Moreover, the never changing programme, curls up into the innermost recesses of the digital era; the couple is here confronted by sorry or sick spacemen, and even noisy shadowsThat is to say twenty science-fiction chapters (Royal Trux or Twin Infinitives wouldn't disown them) wrapped up in a digipack and delivering a proletarian masterpiece. Nota bene: the Double Nelson is, first and foremost, a wrestling grip which derives its effectiveness from an element of surprise and some minimalism of gesture that enables one to overcome the most heroic combatants". (QED)
JOIE DE VIVRE and NOODLE SALAD (F) January 02 > about the demo !
Here is the new diamond from the coolest duo in the history of rock'n'roll. Recorded September 01 at "Magasin 4" in Brussels, this new album features 21 tracks (productiveness is their thing, no contest!) and what tracks! With Double Nelson you ought to take your time and get into their world as simply as possible; it's hard to figure out what UFO it really is after the first listening ...totally different from their live performance. Following "Indoor" a few years ago, this "more-than-awaited" new episod reveals some logical evolution: a resolutely noisy music, yet danceable (a relentless groove, lots of percussions, loads of bass) and which, contrarily to the first impression, eventually turns out to be very cheerful and very funny (it is rather puzzling to hear phrases concealed right in the heart of the mix lezlawai far more grabbing withheadphones on!). It yells, screams, thumps and laughs. Behind what you imagine to be serious music there is a lot of fooling around One more time, Double Nelson offer us a -bloody well done- fresh record, a kind of noisy world music, some sort of binary dub, hypnotic punk of great distinction! Another gripping record which makes life difficult for the listener; and if Jimmy has got some work until 2002 (lezlawai)...Go to hell Jimmy! the DN are fully booked until 2030 and that's our dearest wish. Any fans out there? They're looking for a label to release it.