Joe Mooreis incredible. Sometimes we wonder how time will treat the work of such a multifaceted, open-minded author. He offers us music as a whole, as an absolute. The arrangements, the melodies, these are the ends to which everything else is the means. Styles don’t matter, labels don’t matter. There are just songs. His new Mini-LP, “Filter”, released under the name of THE PERFECT KISS, the moniker he reserves for his most electronic compositions, makes this clear. Because just as he has played different styles of pop, the sixties sound and chamber music with his main project, THE YEARNING, with THE PERFECT KISS his musical language takes a major turn. Where “Disconnect”, THE PERFECT KISS’ debut Mini-LP, was a marvelous electro-pop treatise, “Filter” dives head first into italo disco, without letting go of the synth-pop. And again, it’s a triumph.

The eight songs on this 500-copy-numbered-limited-edition, magenta-colored, 10” vinyl are marvelous. While we listen to undeniable hits like “Indebted To You”, “Glitches” and “At The End Of The Rainbow”, we are reminded of FUTURE BIBLE HEROES and CHVRCHES, of ELECTRIC YOUTH and SAINT ETIENNE, of A-HA and YAZOO. With the beauty of “Talking To Myself”, “Compete” and “Trying Your Patience” we are taken from THE POSTAL SERVICE to OMD, from VISAGE to Ryan Paris. When we hear the sonic deformation of &l [ Read more ]

THE PERFECT KISS is a new project led by the multifaceted Joe Moore, whom many of you already know from his “classic pop” facet fronting projects like THE YEARNING and Lia Pamina. THE PERFECT KISS is another exercise in composition and arrangements for our Brit, but this time with a radically different register. “Disconnect” is a mini-LP of electro-pop, recorded with only a keyboard from 1985 – the Yamaha PortaSound PSS-450, that his friend Jeanie Pugh’s father gave him. His companion on this new adventure is Holly Vanags, a singer from Faringdon, Oxfordshire. Her stimulating voice, delicate and intelligent, perfectly adapts to the musical and conceptual universe of THE PERFECT KISS.

Using only a keyboard to record the eight songs on the album had countless consequences. Obviously, it affected the sound of the album – minimal, delicate, but agile and with a profoundly pop spirit. The thing is Joe Moore reminds us more and more of Stephin Merrit, for his versatility, his openness and prolificacy. In fact, THE PERFECT KISS, somehow, reminds us of FUTURE BIBLE HEROES. Though it also reminds us of AU REVOIR SIMONE, LALI PUNA, and even THE HUMAN LEAGUE. Another consequence had meta-musical effects. By using a keyboard as the only recording instrument, with its presets, sounds, and programmed drum machine, they couldn’t use a computer quantifier. This means that the recording was deeply organic, and highly technically difficult as fa [ Read more ]