Death in Vegas “The Contino Sessions” (1999)
The band were originally called ‘Dead Elvis’, but as it tunred out this was the name
of an existing record label. They changed their name to the thematically similar
‘Death in Vegas’ and used the Dead Elvis moniker for their first album
instead.
The Contino Sessions (named for their recording space) is their second
album. The blurb in the book mentioned DJing and electronica and I’d
thought that I’d be getting something very much in that musical arena. I
was quite surprised then to hear the opening track “Dirge” that starts with a sparse guitar line and vocals, then eventually builds to a Shoe-gazey wall of guitar noise.
There are definitely electronic elements here (electronic beats, loops)
but the sound veers between the aforementioned shoegazey sound and
triphop, with shoe-gaze/wall-of-guitar band Jesus and Mary Chain’s
vocalist Jim Reid featuring on one track “Broken Little Sister”. Actually, that one sounded a bit familiar to me.
The second track “Soul Auctioneer” features a sinister, subdued groove
that would not feel out of place on an early Massive Attack album.
Iggy Pop features spoken word vocals on “Aisha”, meanwhile the track
“Aladdin’s Story” is a rare burst of upbeat melody amongst the gloom…
though even there, it’s deceptive. The few lyrics are hardly uplifting
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen/Nobody knows my sorrow”.
