Krisma

1965 and thereabouts. Maurizio Arcieri is gorgeous, and around him swirl garage and beat. His whims need to be indulged, and perhaps even given a suitably flattering label. So along come New Dada, savvy enough to also entice the intelligentsia, smitten as it was with Tristan Tzara.

Reality is quite different. The product is coy, mannered, aesthetically pristine, but doesn't shake the conscience much, winning over instead legions of girls enraptured by the beauty of Maurizio, who, however, always did have those cat-like eyes. A handful of years as a solo artist are enough to set up a sulphurous and propitious encounter, and barely a decade later, Maurizio is ready to tear off his angel wings and slip into stretch&latex straight from hell. His unsettling and redemptive tormentor is a young Swiss fan, Christina Moser: blonde, tall, statuesque and delightfully uninhibited. They marry. Together, they're magnetic. Love doesn't stay confined to the bedroom, and Christina is no woman for bed-and-board domesticity; Maurizio is enchanting and fragile, and she acts as his astonishing valkyrie. The comedown, the malaise, the discovery of paranoia and alienation as socially shared afflictions, in this second half of Italy's leaden Seventies, bear the name Chrisma (later changed to Krisma), a contraction of Christina and Maurizio.

Italy is too stifling for a talent so far outside the lines, light years away from the heavy burden of political commitment and from forced absorption into the machinery of a record industry that would flatten his flair and distort his aesthetic.

London, with the free-flowing contradictions of the punk movement, seems far more stimulating and welcoming for anyone in need of a socio-cultural space in which to live within the system while still keeping it at arm's length. Yet the movement's extremes only partly touch the couple, who, even while playing along with safety pins and bleached hair, remain anchored to a warm sensual pop embroidered with tropicalismo on their debut single, "Amore", born out of a collaboration with Nico Papathanassiou, Polygram's new artistic director, and his brother, Vangelis.

It's 1977. One year is enough to perfect their de-Italianization, shorten the unsettling distance between Eros and Thanatos, and brazenly play with the murkiness of "U", once again produced by the Papathanassiou brothers. With the technical trials in alienation from the heavy burden of a forced Italian-ness now complete, it's time to lay all the cards on the table and release a proper album.

Introduced by the single "Lola", "Chinese Restaurant" comes out on Polydor in 1977, again produced by Vangelis.

The record, from the artwork alone, already looks utterly removed from the pop conventions of the Maurizio of barely a decade earlier. The couple walk with their backs to the camera, wrapped in heavy black coats, platinum-blonde hair standing out against them, in front of a Chinese restaurant. But the change isn't just in the form. The substance manages to filter the sexual disco of their earlier singles into a cold, haughty, elegantly fetishistic sensuality, even as a politically-correct audience is quick to slap on it the label of the most visceral punk — which, in truth, captivates our duo chiefly on an aesthetic level, as shown by the provocative use of safety pins stuck through cheeks and razors clumsily wielded during the odd live show.

The colour of "Thank You", a fully instrumental intro, is a grey dusk of synths overwhelmed by encroaching fog and reverbs rising from the most outrageous cavities of the asphalt. A fitting introduction to the bonfire of vanities lit by Christina on "Black Silk Stocking", a lascivious electronic dance number, delivered with the swagger of a magnetic, gorgeous female Alan Vega alter-ego in full provocation mode. If the single "Lola" had been the preview of a languid biography set to a two-voice tango, narrating the ambiguity of the Chinese Restaurant's barmaid ("Lola is a private eye/ She well disguises/ Her lingering actions/ No-one suspecting/ At the Chinese, Lola/ Killed all those/ Who did her wrong/ Her soul is blazing/ With blood thirsty craving/ No-one suspecting"), "C-Rock" weaves the obsessive monotony of a single verse into a fragile, motorik pre-wave pulse worthy of Neu!, and "What For", a darker nod to the earliest, almost contemporaneous Ultravox, becomes the conception of the future "Calling", featured on "Hibernation", the duo's next (and logically consecutive) album. This trilogy is closed off by the haughtier (there's David in it) and more strung-out (there's Iggy in it) "Wanderlust", in which Maurizio splits in two, alternating a detached spoken delivery with a more visceral vocal, in a crystalline post-punk dynamism.

Towards the end, the violin advances over the synthetic stretch, sketching out a cold, aching ballad (“Lycee”), followed by the exotic, deliberately blurred slide of “Mandoia”, a captivating mystery with a lingering kraut aftertaste.

The closing track revisits the intro, filled by Maurizio on vocoder with a roll-call of thanks to his guiding spirits (Lonnie Donegan, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, Wanda Jackson, Charlie Watts, The Boys, Mick Jagger, The Saints, Bill Wyman, Iggy Pop, Neu!, Fats And His Cats, Dave Anthony Mods, Les Paul, Sha-Na-Na, Roxy Music, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Jimi Hendrix, Jonny Kid, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Marc Bolan, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby).

The choice not to leave anything out, in the attempt to tell a concept like “Chinese Restaurant”, is akin to the way that, when travelling, the minor details of our destination captivate us just as much as the standout ones — those already imagined, described, partly lived even before setting off. Our experience becomes a continuous, unbroken flow, immune to the loss of even a single thread.

This is the essence of a good journey, and this is the truth of a truly great trip.

The fact that the agents were 90% Italian is, moreover, an added value, to be chalked up to our by-now resigned sense of national musical pride.

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04/10/2010