LARSEN - Decalcomania

Larsen have been around for thirty years, which isn't automatically a good thing. Some longevities are so weary that they trap artists into self-imitation, ending up repeating the same tired game out of laziness and comfort. With "Decalcomania", however, the Turin band proves to be a splendid thirty-year-old. The credit isn't just down to talent that's by now well established, but also to an open curiosity toward the genius of others. The list of collaborations is indeed long and varied, and the reckless urge to hybridize, mutate and bastardize themselves always saves them from dying of boredom.

This time it was William Basinski's turn to steer the project toward new sonic horizons. The Texan composer produced and stretched out the tracks, swelling them with his metropolitan loops and infecting them with an end-of-the-world saxophone. The result is a varied kaleidoscope of Larsen's career, charged with an intriguing, dark sense of catastrophe. The opener "This Is Only A Test" is a danceable alarm siren, a robotic, pneumatic loop in the vein of Kraftwerk underpinning Modenese Palumbo's detached, ironic spoken delivery (lyrics by Little Annie, a long-standing key figure in the group's work). The choruses paint Orwellian scenarios amid electronic crescendos, pulsations and vibratos.

"The Distress Lounge" is a decaying set design, all reverb and metallic mist, out of which an avant-jazz saxophone emerges, unsettled by skittish electronic suggestions and liquid drones; think an instrumental version of "Black Tie White Noise" mired in dystopian visions. A partial return to their origins comes with "The Entanglement", which, through heavy beats, downtempo drums and acidic guitars, recalls the murderous atmospheres of "No Arms, No Legs: Identification Problems" but pushes them toward a rarefied, alarmed post-industrial.
"Substrata" is ten minutes of assorted art, a postmodern collage capable of making worlds light-years apart converse with one another. Shifting, eccentric, magmatic, it's born out of computational chaos, evolving and structuring itself like an immense, dark cosmic environment, pulsed through and charged with dub and alternative fragments. Closing things out is "POV 20", buoyed by wonderfully inspired drumming that leads into a new descent into the darkest, most ambiguous whirlpools of post-rock, softened by Basinski's sordid, noir saxophone.

"Decalcomania" is a solid, convincing effort; Larsen imprint themselves perfectly onto Basinski's experience and imagination, sculpting a sound that is alive, contemporary and unconventional.

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18/08/2026