Soft Moon + Maserati

The mild Roman evening of April 10, 2013 was a great opportunity to get up close with two of the most exciting and talked-about musical acts of recent times (one relatively new, the other with a few years of career behind it), Maserati and Soft Moon, all for the modest price of eight euros. Anyone who lives in Rome knows that Circolo degli Artisti is the go-to venue (along with Traffic, where Mi Ami played two years ago) for the most important dates on the independent music circuit. The show was scheduled to start at 9.30pm (this venue now enforces a strict rule requiring concerts to start early and end by midnight on the dot), but Maserati didn't take the stage until 10pm, by which point there was already a decent crowd inside the Circolo's not-so-large hall. They played for about forty-five minutes, running through most of the material from their latest album for Temporary Residence, "VII".

On stage, Maserati cut a fine figure (technically flawless), but they also fell into a certain monotony, as they seemed to be playing more or less the same track over and over, with minimal variations. Their space-rock is undoubtedly engaging for the first ten minutes, but over time it becomes tiring and repetitive, even though the audience present seemed to enjoy their performance. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's not enough to rely on all the various tricks (frankly overused by now) of cyclical, spiraling melodies descended from Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, and various sequencers blasted in the audience's face to try to impress with something new (which isn't new at all), all over rhythmic patterns of a simple, constant four-four beat. Another point against them was the overly distorted sound, which came across as even heavier inside the hall, which acted as an echo chamber.

Californian Luis Vasquez, a rising star of the new "gothic-rock" under the moniker Soft Moon, took the stage at 11pm along with his backing band. They did a brief fifteen-minute soundcheck and, at 11.15pm, kicked off their show, playing mostly tracks from "Zeros" (Captured Tracks, 2012) and, for the rest, the standout tracks from their classic "Soft Moon" (Captured Tracks, 2010), today regarded as something of a landmark of the latest generation of "gothic", plus something from the "Total Decay" EP. They didn't play anything, however (or at least it seemed that way to me, though I could be wrong), from the collaborative record with veteran John Foxx, an album that ranks a notch or two below their two official releases.

The most surprising thing about Soft Moon's performance is how little their live sound differs from what's on record. The atmospheres are pretty much identical, including Vasquez's voice, filtered and buried under layers of noise (and often drenched in delay) — he thrashed about on stage like a man possessed, as if struck by a sudden case of Saint Vitus' dance — and even the length of the songs is the same. The climax came in the most obsessive, hypnotic tracks, where their "gothic-indie" managed to be a perfect blend of eighties sounds à la Sisters Of Mercy and proto-industrial ones (almost like Pan Sonic, on the tracks with a higher BPM) and Teutonic ones (Neu! are never far away), passing through Lycia along the way.

The finale, at exactly 11.55pm, was a sudden techno surge built on a "shoe/shit-gaze" foundation. At midnight, the lights came up, the plug was pulled, and everyone headed home happy and satisfied after a great evening spent with friends and a band that clearly still has plenty of good things left to say.

Photo by Fish'n'Chips

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