Review | “Vital Delusions” by Sons of Faust
A masterpiece of 21st century baroque pop and Neo Romantic synth-psychedelia.
The third LP by the enigmatic duo Sons of Faust announces a departure from electronic ambient and synthetic art rock.
It's a collection of cover versions that moves the dial decidedly towards a pop-inflected eclecticism, all the while continuing to uphold the hyper-aesthetic integrity that made the first two Sons of Faust albums such beloved cult classics.
“Vital Delusions” (Psychonaut Elite Records) aims to capture the mood of a radio show charting the alternative hit parade of a parallel universe.
Featuring radical reconfigurations of six idiosyncratic choices, mainly of forgotten alt-classics interspersed with a few standards, “Vital Delusions” amounts to a playlist akin to an idealized songbook
The exotic atmosphere throughout is heavily perfumed with unexpected fusions of meticulously curated audio references.
Drawing influences from all over the (late) 19th and 20th-century sonic spectrum (including but not limited to late '70s synth-pop, library curiosities, and soundtrack oddities), the impact of these tracks is augmented by emotionally generous, lush orchestrations and grandiose, philharmonic arrangements
This maximalist mood is set, emphatically by the opener, “Better Days”, originally a straightforward pop-rock standard, which now improbably harbors two successive orchestral interludes reminiscent of Ravel and Vangelis respectively
Both of these capriccios somehow, inexplicably, make perfect sense as they nestle unexpectedly between slices of a gloriously laid-back early '70s radio-friendly ballad.
As if these disruptions were not enough, the entire impossible edifice, equally improbably, burst into a galloping finale, exploding into uptempo symphonic fireworks whose exuberance is worthy of ABBA at their crowd-pleasing best.
A similar big band gloss gives a sleek, spacey update to the mind-bending '60s psychedelic rarity “Farewell Aldebaran”.
In this record, George Miadis (performer, composer, producer) and Panagiotis Chatzistefanou (creative director) examine the idea of a cover version as a vehicle for aleatory juxtapositions.
The method to their madness is an improvisational exercise summoning the magic of the original songs by recasting their spells and interpreting their intentions in the syntax of invented poetics and the vocabulary of a private aesthetic vernacular, creating hybrid techno-lyrical enchantments, like hothouse orchids rendered by AI, beautiful yet uncanny.
Meeting each other across multiple space-time divides, their musical references share a commonality of 20th-century Neo-Romantic affectations, either in the sense
of the baroque mannerisms typical of the Bright Young Things, the artistic group that flourished in Britain between the wars (including Cecil Beaton, Lord Berners, Stephen Tennant, et al.), or in the sense
of the short-lived late '70s / early '80s post-punk London club scene exemplified by the meta-Bowie / après-Kraftwerk decadent stylings of Visage, Ultravox, Ronny, Rerb et. al.
A prime example of this very particular sensibility is the after-midnight electro-pop of “You came too late”, originally a Weimar-era chanson, whose haunting melody contemplates its theatrical melancholy in the shiny fragments of a late-'80s Latin freestyle dub, an impromptu encounter threading together two very distinct yet complementary enunciations of melodrama
Such odd interpolations of seemingly disparate genres provide other instances of ravishing ingenuity, like the Tchaikovsky choral flourishes that delineate a 19th-century context for “How Insensitive”, originally an early '60s standard, which blooms into a synthetic ballad echoing in a futuristic airport
Shape-shifting transmissions beyond the thin veil separating consensus reality and exaggerated sophistication, these sonic artifacts represent evolutionary instances of statistical aberrations, morphing and mutating as they evolve away from their roots and face the prospects afforded by spectacular principles.
Not merely out-of-this-world, but flying under the radar of another dimension, this eccentric approach seems to posit that it's not enough to be meticulously irrelevant if an artist aims for uniqueness.
An extremist frame of mind must be strictly adhered to, assiduously following the rules of the science of exceptions, finding constant parameters and continuous themes through disparate timelines and incompatible narratives.
A new direction for the intrepid Sons of Faust, “Vital Delusions” remains faithful to their eccentric mission of discovery as they continue their audio excavations, searching for a convincing version of authenticity in the dark mines of sonic aesthetics.
Text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou, Berlin, 2023