ANNA CLEMENTI - Fräulein Annie

A triumphant return for the versatile Italo-Swedish musician and performer. Six years after the excellent "Love Is A Reason", Anna Clementi, an avant-garde artist by training with clubbing in her veins, finally resurfaces with a revamped look and an entirely new musical project. Joined by Roman "sampler" Filippo Paolini, better known as Økapi, Clementi dons a boa and stiletto heels and guides us into a refined, sensual little theatre for futuristic, high-class jazz clubs.

At the heart of the scene is "Miss Annie", a Clementi who sings and purrs like a knowing cat, poised between retrò charm and contemporary aesthetics: "How Long" is a thoroughly modern soul-tinged patchwork, somewhere in the vicinity of Roisin Murphy and Dani Siciliano; "Voodoo" is a spare number of sweet mewling laced with Teutonic touches and micro-rhythms; while "Fashion Pack" updates, of all things, a piece by the ever-ambiguous Amanda Lear for chill-out and Mitteleuropean electronic (de)structures.

Clementi's voice is velvety and chameleonic, shifting its tone from track to track: on "Figli Delle Stelle", the overplayed classic by Alan Sorrenti, she becomes an easy-listening vocalist under the influence of hallucinogens, pushed along by tribal-electronic percussion à la Burnt Friedman, while "Sexyphone" is at once sweet and provocative, and "Fidelio" is an unusual variation on a theme by Lydia Lunch, reworked through turntablism.

The second half of the album abandons any (vague) pop ambition and gives in to increasingly complex, abrasive textures: from the unsettling trip-hop of "Come Rain Come Taxi" to the intricate electronic tangle of "Kztk" and "Interplanetary Addiction", up to the lovely closer "Slo79", where the cat stops purring and improvises as an indie-rock chanteuse.

A mysterious record of the highest class, "Fräulein Annie" takes the alluring Anna Clementi beyond the conventions of the neo-lounge muse and fully unleashes her theatrical and experimental potential, shaping a musical crossover as unusual as it is exhilarating.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

15/03/2012