Tr/st
Performance
Label: Dais
Genre: Electro / Electro-Rock
Availability
- LP €23.99 Dispatched within 5-10 working days
The title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about Alfons’ intrinsically performative nature. The opener, “Soon,” swells to life with hymnal electronics before kicking through the dance floor with a huge new wave hook, spiked with caustic kiss-off lyrics (“Asleep I still say it aloud / Scared stiff it’s all around / We never did call it off, now our organs dried / Scared stiff to stone, you liar”). The music moves between beauty and bitterness, anthem and anguish, the sound of melancholia gone massive. On track after track, Alfons wields pop dynamics and brooding production wizardry like a weapon, spiraling through a roll call of singles – “All At Once,” “The Shore,” “Dark Day,” “Boys of LA.” Throughout, there’s a sense of emotional turmoil elevated to strange heights, stained by guilt and ghosts and the memory of those wronged and those still unforgiven.
As a world unto itself, Performance is persuasive, immersive, and intoxicating, at the threshold of stirring and disturbing. Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night: “Now we see the rotten mind / It’s eye to eye and mysteries/ Sail your boat for shore / I sit by the window waiting for it.”