Stripping the concept of a 'band' down to it's sole song creator is something a lot of people have been going out on a limb for lately. The attention is usually focused on the lead singer/guitar player in most bands for the most part, so when a one-man band takes the stage, there's plenty of elbow room and it's always easy to get a good view. While most of the US and Canadian lone-wolf rock'n roll units have a understandable southern flair in the spirit of Hasil Adkins at heart, it's the weird European guys like Lightning Beat Man, Lawrence Wasser, and this guy here you really should be worried about. The Feeling of Love is one of the most captivating of the recent Glue-Wave hit machines, and has recently risen above the CD-R only release-status to appear for the first time on a Yakisakana 7". Yes, it's another knockout sleeve design, and more deviant music from France that you're really going to have to scramble to keep up with. Minimalism like this is a perfect counterbalance to math rock, and with only two hands, two legs and a mouth, it's got to have something truly special to stick out from the crowd these days, and that one thing with the Feeling of Love is a drum machine. Although not used on every song, the electronic rhythm offers such a departure from the classic one man drill, that it gives off a less earthy and more experimental musical direction, which keeps it refreshing. This 7" harnesses the aggressively noisy grooves that have edged it away from the blues framework and into the French Future of sound quite well. Not necessarily abandoning the sliding down-home riffs altogether, the meshing of the antique chords with the futuristic lo-fidelity intensity are the elements of a substratal style most rock'n rollers aren't too familiar with, which is really what makes it shine. Smooth and seductive dissonant repetition like this, interwoven with scalding vocals that give each song a building hypnotic quality is hard to shake, or even walk away from. For instance, when their bio says "...believe me, semen runs in his veins..." you know you're not really dealing with some thrown back chicken picker here, but more of a head scratcher. Collaborating with the prime movers at Phil Scrotum Productions is exactly what needed to happen for these unrefined recordings and hitting the road this week with Cheb Samir And the Black Souls of Leviathan for a tour of the countryside couldn't have been a better idea either. Pick up the record from our fine mailorder links on the front page and check out a Feeling of Love video here...
