BLOW - Paper Television

Here's a country where weeks are made up of six Thursdays and one Sunday, and the autumn holidays start on the first of January and end on the thirty-first of December. In other words, the land of toys. The two little "Lucignolos", Khaela Maricich and Jona Bechtolt, play at being mischievous with makeshift tricks of the trade, cobbling together a collection of noises that recall abacuses, tambourines, hand-claps and little basslines: they fill up a cart already overflowing with madness, following the charming experiences of their previous records.

"Paper Television" comes out on Tomlab in late autumn 2006, in chestnut-and-fallen-leaves season, without that stopping the duo from surrounding everything with bright, lively colours. The two of them show a childlike approach to emotions, as it probably always should be, and send up a cheerful, clearly visible blue smoke signal. They seem to curse against boredom, often forgetting, however, that the intensity of art also lies in the perfect reconciliation of conflicting feelings.

You just need to look up at the sky to glimpse that dense explosion of colours that marks the tumultuous beats of "Pile Of Gold", before lifting your fingers off the player's home key and wrapping up whatever chupa chups you're sucking on; looking around, then, we can't help but picture a nursery school, where the children's drawings are projected onto the building's walls via high-definition projectors, and the little choirs for the end-of-year show feature a mischievous use of laptop keyboards. An electronic Dadaism that's at times overly literal, nifty beats whose only purpose is to lead us on a joyful butterfly hunt ("The Big U").

Everything is made of paper, including the disguises, the poses on the cover, the subliminal messages. The trouble is, it's not easy to peer inside a centrifuge: you risk not being able to bear the weight of the dizziness, or the stomach-churning drops. You probably can't fully grasp the meaning of things, going along, despite yourself, with the grand illusion.

This is to say the record is tremendous fun, but too much of a good thing spoils it a little. Without meaning to, you end up caught in the steamroller of the Clementoni toy machines on display here, setting aside the search for reflection that wouldn't go amiss even in a playful context. Unfortunately, and it really is a shame, "Paper Television" fails to sustain the same depth throughout its whole runtime, despite the solid worth of so many of its segments.

Take, for example, the Eastern-tinged textures of "True Affection" or the Jamaican excursions of "Babay", the only passages where the detachment from the childlike cosmos is truly complete: essentially, there's no longer the urge to become "little girls" again at all costs just to brighten up and sweeten their free time. The fairy tale has grown more "adult".

Having put the hula-hoop back in the room of memories, Tomlab's terrible girls (?) dream up a new game to play: this time it's the classic childish parody of early-80s disco-flavoured synth-pop ("Fists Up"), improvising, moreover, a comical transfiguration of those sounds.

All we, as fussy listeners, can do is hope, with a smile on our faces, that the two "little girls" come straight back from the other side of the house to finish their homework.

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09/01/2007