Velvet May: Enchanted By The Muse – Album Review & Interview.

Velvet May: Enchanted By The Muse

(Veyl)

Out Now

DL | LP

Snagged and snapped apart by a chaotic ballet/battle of decadence and lust, straddling a visionary beam somewhere in a realm of emotional dissonance, in a state of industrial desolation, Velvet May creates one of the year’s finest examples of how electronic music still wins in articulating the human condition on his debut album for Veyl, Enchanted By The Muse. Review and Interview by Ryan Walker.

It’s been almost five years since a release from Velvet May (Andrea Davide). But don’t let five years fool you into thinking it was a stint of inactivity. Since his last Velvet May release, Phoebe’s White Skin on his own Tears On Waves Imprint, so much has happened.

Despite the absence of much new music, either as Hobi or under his own name, the space of time elapsed since we last witnessed a new Velvet May release has centred around the idea of appreciating what Velvet May stands for as an entire vista of expression, an oeuvre of undoubted purpose. Opposed to just littering the corpus of the work with a scattershot of disparate snippets of musical experiments that, although may well be interesting, may tarnish the optimal force essential to Andrea’s identity, his past, his future, his position in the present that galvanises Velvet May as an endeavour to create significant impact with his music, rather than just be a project festooned with electronic noodlings and doodlings from the confines of his bedroom. A connection was made, guided not by the magnetic throng of a psychic crowd in the club he is a resident attendee of, nor guided by a more acoustic affair – but guided by a connection stimulated into existence by an innate compulsion to belong, to accept the way things go in this world.

”Primary inspiration behind the creation of this album was, above all, the desire to release all the emotions and textures within me, embracing music in its entirety’’ Andrea explains. ”I did not approach this project with the intention of creating a club product or an acoustic one. Instead, I allowed myself to be carried away by the process, without overthinking the outcome, and included everything I needed to express. Since my last release, I have developed a deeper connection with acoustic music and singing. This has significantly increased my desire to showcase the many facets of my music resulting in a body of work that truly represents who I am and where I am headed’’.

Clearly – the deeper this connection convinced Andrea is worth the dig, the subsequent output of wanting to express who he is, nothing more, nothing less, oozes an infectious, immense validity, vital for now, vital for always. Some housekeeping has been tended to in the gap between his last release and this latest work. He had his eyes set on bigger. Better. Turning with a greater sense of adventure and experimentalism that can reflect a three-dimensional image of Andrea quite unlike anything that we have seen in his previous works. ”My ambition was to raise my standards and create music at 360 degrees, staying true to my artistic vision and recognizing a genuine expression. Above all, I’ve come to realise that the music I create should serve as the soundtrack to my life, aiming to make it immortal: something I can still listen to even 30 years from now’’.

Now That You Have Left It All is an epic opening voyage throughout various illuminated levels and dirt-encrusted high-rise terrace gardens, squashed and stacked together like Lego blocks in a bad mood. An adventure through unknown territories, navigating through a Christopher Nolan film soundtracked by a collaboration between jesu, John Carpenter and Skinny Puppy where all manner of exotic evils encompass trespassing strangers, those mortal, electro-conquistadors and nomadic cyberpunks who succumb to the vast banquets of a pulsating neon-flicker twilight on their conquest to the event horizon. Next up, Keep On Falling, a Jesus Lizard groove scraping small nails against sheets of withered metal alloy emerges a hellish industrial grumble encased in a bullet-riddled rhino suit, a sickly fuzz within the bottom of the body that commands us to move like a parasite infecting the hard drive of an entire nightclub with all it’s feverish electronic bleeps, rotten warbles and distorted convulsions.

Challenging the stylistic and symbolic conventions of techno and post-punk in favour of their demarcated synthesis rather than their alienated, stereotyped properties, while guided by artistic impulse, unwilling to meticulously overthink the direction that instinct creates (or inadvertently corners us into), just how does a Velvet May album make itself known? How does it form and reveal itself? Is there a formula at work that stays the same for each release despite appearing distinct from each other since Phoebe’s White Skin or the release prior, Unknown Bodies?

For Andrea, for Velvet May, it’s through an interplay of ”exploration and evolution” that confirms to him that things are cooking in the lab. It was a process without formula, without rigid systems of creative confinement or overarching rule of truth, but rather a switch implanted on the side of Andrea’s neck, a switch happy flicking itself, oscillating between ”inspiration and experimentation’’, resting itself on the line where trial and error call the shots and through experimenting with structures, sounds and lyrics that enabled the album to evolve in a more organic manner. ”I never adhered to a fixed formula for each release” Andrea states. ”But I always set a mood and a purpose to ensure consistency and integrity in what I wanted to express”.

The album is also filtered through the lens of lusting for the body, the longing to shatter the showroom dummy into fragments of abstraction, the experience of its inevitable process of decay, the challenge that comes when we realise it cannot be preserved forever, the articulation of what we do to or with the body in moments of rage or pleasure or the headlights of both. An intoxicating struggle, a corporeal flashpoint ambushing our ability to do things we once found so easy. An addiction to unlocking the body’s sensitively devised dimensions, enveloped once its trigger hairs have been trespassed and the edges collapse, forcing us to surrender to its succulent vulnerabilities and insane performative potentials via the intimate threshold only a handful have dared to traverse. These are the themes requisite to the crux of the album’s aura. The themes essential to the expression of a specific mood, a vehicle inspirational enough for Andrea to use as a way to negate formulae, but find something far more significant in its place.

”I find these themes deeply compelling because they touch on some of the most fundamental aspects of the human experience. The body’s journey—from its peak to its decline—is a physical manifestation of our inner struggles, desires, and transformations’’ explains Andrea. ”In exploring the lust for the body, I’m drawn to the ways it both empowers and limits us. Through Velvet May, I aim to delve into these themes with nuance and sensitivity and to explore its desires, limitations, and the profound ways in which it shapes our experience of life’’.

Does this mean the body is the muse? The very object, or an apparitional ideal of which the album is named? Not quite.

”In a world that often feels to me decadent and saturated with everything, the muse is the embodiment of light and motivation that drives us forward. It represents the inner inspiration that fuels our creativity, ignites our passion, and pushes us to explore new horizons, overcome obstacles, and find meaning in our experiences” Andrea states. ”It’s the guiding light that helps us see potential in the world around us. Through this album, I wanted to capture the essence of that enchanting force that motivates us to continue striving, creating, and evolving, even when the world feels overwhelming”.

In the face of an overwhelming world, the jam-packed jackhammer rhythms of Broken Ballad blast open with a squadron of sentient strobes and synapse-shorting heat rays, erupting with manic, dark rave energy, flickering in and out of focus, but always succeed in finding us, feral fading and falling through the cacophony of the throbbing, neon hypogean. Elsewhere, the primal electro howl and big beat warehouse armada of Haven of Thrill cranks up the cranium-crushing EBM but keeps the synths melodies razor-sharp enough to rip us to shreds yet ethereal enough to be observed from outer space. Its scent is soon followed by The Outsider. An industrial-punk death drive unsettling the elements from an underground club via a freight train of punishingly propulsive beats as though ancient overlays of tarmac were nothing but strips of tired velcro. It phases and flickers in and out of focus, crawling closer to the core via a skulking deformity of nasty guitar fuzz, adrenalised bloody-knuckled bass and relentless motor rhythms rotating with fierce, animalistic techno energy that could annihilate anything unfortunate enough to wander aimlessly into its path.

Velvet May represents a departure from his other project, Hobi, a more techno, club-oriented species attracted to the hum of electronic rebellion, a different cut of metropolitan industrial darkness from the hot blood of its dancefloors. ”While both projects share the same human behind, Velvet May explores a broader and more transcendent spectrum of emotions and sounds. It’s less about fitting into a specific scene and more about breaking free from conventional genre constraints’’ he confirms.

Direct. Unfiltered. Within techno, within industrial or within post-punk, Andrea finds ample ammunition to articulate the vision and materialise the world of Velvet May by breaking free of those categories of classification. He does so not just by a devout, dignified homage to the scenes that moulded him, but also by working outside of those scenes, those styles, those paradigms, and rather, makes a promise to himself to represent nothing except who he is: beyond techno, outside industrial, separate of post-punk. The album is an excavation of those distinct, musical tools (which evidently Andrea can more than hold his own about what, through absorbed experiential eloquence and an encyclopaedic knowledge on them, attempts to square the circle and deduce what some of the defining characteristics of those genres might be), and rather than be constrained by them in some kind of imprisonment of pastiche, the fundamental essence of those tools is worked into a frenzy resulting in nothing shy of anything but a hybrid drama of original compositions. The rhythm of the body is an electronic one. Electronic music, like punk (or a permutation of it e.g. post-punk) represents what others can’t, an ”expression of dissent, individuality, and societal critique’’. In other words: the Music of The Outsider. The music of the scrapyard exile, the battle hymns of some itinerant irritant, some camouflaged, leprous art anarchist that collects what society disowns as frankly – garbage.

But to someone like Andrea, to something like Velvet May, it’s all a form of treasure. Information. At first compartmentalised according to their musical, emotional, or psychological components that resonate to some inspirational degree, then eventually enmeshed together in the same helix.

”The styles of techno, industrial, and post-punk provide a rich palette for articulating my vision due to their inherent qualities and expressive potential’’ he says. ”Techno offers a driving, pulsating energy that’s ideal for exploring the physicality of the body. Industrial brings a raw, often abrasive edge that captures the harsh realities of existence and the gritty, visceral aspects of the body’s decline and post-punk offers a wide range of emotions that go from melancholy to rebelliousness, allowing for a deep exploration of the human psyche and its complexities’’.

Andrea established himself by playing clubs in Italy- a formative experience There’s a pulse constantly pumping throughout the tunes, an album full of both swagger and collapse, musically mind-melting density and the dexterity to escape it, full of clarity and command that the club culture he was a part of, even a product of, consciously or not, seeped into his system. The idea of gravitating towards the moody beat. The idea of being surrounded by something that can drift away, disappear any moment, then crash back into action. ”Playing clubs in Italy was important as it allowed me to explore different sounds and styles, enriching my creativity’’ states Andrea. ”These experiences taught me, above all, the importance of connecting with the audience and trying to always maintain a strong stage presence and confidence’’.

Life in Berlin too seems to have left an indelible mark on Andrea. It bleeds into what he builds. The music scene of the city, the lengthy, impossible-to-ignore heritage of producing scene-shaking art, various events and happenings and hotspots of musical innovation, all evoked in Enchanted By The Muse. ”The places, cultural diversity, and people I’ve encountered inspire and are reflected in my album. Electronic music is more prominent and vibrant compared to Rock when comparing Berlin to cities in the UK or US, but the energy and cultural diversity provides a unique environment that stimulates creativity and encourages experimentation with new sounds and ideas”.

The beginning of Andrea’s journey into techno, industrial and new wave music began as a member of a collective called Waves In Transition (which morphed into a label, She Lost Kontrol later on that he has followed ever since) As the debut promoter in Naples that actively integrated artists from the techno, industrial and post-punk scenes, a never before seen feature on the clubbing circuit, the collective introduced Andrea to a diverse array of aspects that filled the world it was bringing to Naples that would significantly influence his music, whilst also encouraging him to push himself further afield in order to manipulate and constantly refine those aspects.

The album seems to expose a dirtier, grittIer, grimier side to electronic music: an immense vector, endlessly turning itself (and others) inside out where man and machine cross-pollinate, the digitising of the spirit on a holographic stage (and the desire to return to a time before technology smothers nature in her sleep when the finality dusk couldn’t be recharged to present a cycled version of dawn), a view of the past as well as the future, a view of ourselves now, what we were, and what we will be, a genre of questions (sometimes with no answers, keeping us on the realm of the improbable, the edge of the unknown) – it reveals it’s many different personalities writhing underneath that broader electronic term thanks to this fusion of what bends and boils and flows under its complex spectrum. It’s situated within the splendour of this deep-reaching web, this ruinous chamber capable of constant reinvention (rather than just, in some unfortunate cases where time stands still and sticks to the skin, regurgitation) that makes Enchanted by the Muse a contemporary feast for the senses to become immersed in. Pastiche? No. But poignant in how frenetic, yet cultivated in its dark powers the album regularly strives for and succeeds in smacking between the eyes, zapped by a psychotropic proboscis.

Sometimes styles such as punk or EBM can turn into parody. album escapes that by not thinking about what to do from the perspective of pleasing a particular musical trope but draws on other sources of influence to make a connection, to ignite a fuse, to destroy myths and make techno, punk or industrial music something uniquely real to and relevant to the Velvet May universe. It’s the mark of an artist to appreciate the potency and endless gifts within those mentioned styles. ”For me, they are more like a set of tools or languages that I can draw from. I try to keep things fresh by staying true to my own creative instincts and not worrying too much about fitting into any specific genre. I draw on a wide range of influences and then I blend them in a way that feels authentic to me. By doing this, I aim to create music that feels uniquely real and personal” Andrea says. ”To me, that’s what being an artist is all about. Appreciating the potency and endless possibilities within these styles and then using them to express something new and true to myself”.

If you can be contemporary enough with one eye on the here and now but have enough humility to admit you have an eye and ear pressed against the past, then you’re in a good spot to conform and absorb but also challenge and change a lineage. The past and future as glass boxes. Breathe against it. Beat against it. Tap against the glass and trip into the sky. What does he think about genre or style? Is it a load of bullshit? ”Genres and styles offer a context, a frame of reference that allows artists to express themselves and the audience to orient themselves and understand the creative work. However, it’s essential not to become rigidly trapped in these categories. Imagining the past and the future as glass boxes that we can breathe, beat, and touch represents a powerful metaphor. It means recognizing the importance of roots and innovations, understanding that true progress is achieved by integrating respect for history with the desire to explore new frontiers” states Andrea. ”Therefore, instead of considering genres and styles as limitations, I see them as flexible tools that can be manipulated, mixed, and reworked to create something unique. It is this ability to move between the past and the future, to conform and simultaneously challenge, that allows art to evolve and remain relevant”.

The album is underpinned by a dyad of what Andrea terms ”emotional dissonance” in an ”industrial desolation’” The harmonisation of these poles echoes the role of a bricoleur. The lifestyle of which, a lot like the lifestyle of Velvet May, upon undertaking their unique expedition, a narrative colourised by rites and myths (e.g. in the clubs of Italy, as part of a collective, running a label) uses whatever is at hand (e.g. pre-existing genres based on their usefulness to us, our ability to interpolate style according to our wants and needs and our interpretation of it, manipulating it’s shapes as though it was clay in a kiln) to construct something out of those constituent parts and reconstructed montage of events. This theory works on an emotional level, a level of emotional asymmetry and disarray, as well as on a more thematic, psychogeographical platform that takes into account the important role of space as a root within which moods of various kinds, and emotions of various kinds, spawn and blossom. The convergence of these two elements, the centrefold between scientific and savage mind, the emotional and the industrial, the dissonant and the desolate, is what makes Enchanted By The Muse so urgent, so alluring.

“Emotional dissonance” refers to the simultaneous presence of contrasting or conflicting feelings’’ Andrea explains. ”This can include love and hate, hope and despair, joy and pain coexisting and creating a kind of internal tension. This emotional complexity is often conveyed through dissonant melodies, ambiguous lyrics, or sound arrangements that evoke a sense of chaos or discomfort. “Industrial desolation” suggests a setting that recalls post-industrial landscapes, abandoned factories, and decaying cities” he adds. ”This environment often symbolises isolation, decay, and dehumanisation. Musically, this can be represented by metallic sounds, mechanical rhythms, dark and jarring atmospheres that reflect the harshness and coldness of the industrial environment. The union of these two elements—the emotional dissonance and the industrial desolation—creates a unique thematic landscape”.

Such thematic landscapes erupt in the sensory riot of Enchanted by the Muse and the techno post-punk howl of Illusion of Control. Such environments vibrate with a hypnotic viscerality thanks to the murderous industrial venom and pulsating, electro-rock swagger of Slithering Serenade, seething with sci-fi jump cuts and woozy, portentous soundscapes or Scales of Gold, part rampant acid-machine riot and part-darkwave psy–trance epic. Within these stylistic receptacles, Velvet May locates ample ammunition to articulate a vision, and materialise the world of his own design, yet quickly slips through the bars bolted onto the windows and makes his escape.

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Words by Ryan Walker