Where were we? Dealing with things, a couple more things, things happening on our street. Our Hackney street is the place to be this coming week or at least for the next two Tuesdays when first Marie Davidson hits this part of town at Oslo and then seven days later maker of dangerous art, Los Angeles synth pop performance artist Geneva Jacuzzi is here at Moth Club…

Marie Davidson has an album called City Of Clowns out via Soulwax’s own Deewee later this month and she’s truly imperfect and she’s not going to cry, do you follow her? She asked that “do you follow her?” question, she says she wants all your asses on the floor, that she wants your passion as she details her sixth studio album City of Clowns, made in collaboration with Soulwax and Pierre Guerineau (Essaie pas, L’Œil Nu, Feu St-Antoine). Do you really care what I have to say about it? Reviews are so last century, we’ll let her music do the talking, here’s a taste and a lo-fi video shot in Milan, a city Davidson says she admires for its underground culture. “The video aims to embrace our inner clown, the one who refuses to go by the rules….” She doesn’t really go with the rules, she’s a contrarian, she’s clearly a person who takes a contrary position or attitude, she has bite here on this album, Marie Davidson clearly is a person who takes an opposing view, who rejects the majority opinion, who knows how she wants to do it…

Here’s some of the hype via the press release for Davidson’s sixth studio album, City of Clowns, an album that “marks a return to the club – but not as you know it. The techno thump and scathing spoken-word delivery of her 2018 album, Working Class Woman, resurface at points, but the pop structures and melodic sensibilities of 2020’s Renegade Breakdown also remain. It’s a “strange” sonic blend even by Davidson’s own standards”.

Is it strange? Really, it sounds rather fluid to be, rather inviting, rather up, rather on the spot, it sounds lush, electronically sharp, smart, it certainly has that spirit she talks of…

“It’s definitely linking back to what I was doing pre-pandemic, but with a bit of an evolution,” she says, “I didn’t want to just repeat myself.” The sound and spirit of the album are shaped, too, by the fact that Davidson has a new antagonist. This time, it’s not club culture that’s coming for her sense of self, it’s Big Tech.

“In the summer of 2022, Davidson became consumed by Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which investigates technology as a new form of economic oppression. For Davidson, it became a great source of alarm as well as inspiration. On City of Clowns, she subtly hints at the themes of the book through track titles, lyrical references and creative choices”.

Do like the sharp crunch, the angles, the flow, she does what she does, she does it rather well, she knows exactly who she is: “You like it when I’m mean, you like it Sexy? Don’t get it confused, cuz I do it for me”. Conflicted? Conflicted feelings, conflict? Contradictions? And yes, that surveillance…

“In the time that has passed [since I read it], people have become more aware of how deep this is, but people have capitulated it a lot too,” she says, “It’s changing the way we live. It’s literally changing our species – the way we interact with each other, and the way we interact with ourselves.” 

“Coming together between early 2021 and summer 2024, City of Clowns began as a solo project and gradually expanded, as Davidson linked up with co-producer Guerineau as well as Stephen and David Dewaele of Soulwax. They pooled together their broader spectrum of influences and built Davidson’s naturally raw style out into something so gargantuan it could swallow you whole”.

It is a rather gargantuan album, but don’t take the word of these ears, and when she says she not that cool you kind of have to disagree, whatever the case she’s certainly made a damn cool album…

Bandcamp / other links /Facebook

And Marie Davidson is in this part of town at OsloHackney’s Oslo here in East London on Tuesday 4th February ahead of the album’s release on the 28th, which is kind of good for us, seeing as both Oslo and the Organ bumker are both on the same Hackney Street.

3rd Feb – Rough Trade East, London (In-Store DJ), 4th Feb – Oslo, London (Live) and 23rd May – Wide Awake Festival, London (Live)

And and and talking of things happening on our street, Geneva Jacuzzi is in town and also on our street this February. Art is Dangerous has been stuck in heads (as well as on our playlists) around here since last Summer. Her dates look like this – Feb 11 – Moth Club, London, Feb 12 – The Lanes, Bristol, Feb 13 – Rough Trade Liverpool, Liverpool, Feb 14 – SOUP, Manchester.

Art is Dangerous was and maybe still is by far the standard track on her Triple Fire album that came out late last Summer (on Dais Records), or maybe that says more about me that her album? Art is Dangerous was a real statement of intent ahead of the album, that I must admit has been growing on us. Not that I ever though it was bad, just a little too poppy when I wanted more dangerous art. Geneva Jacuzzi’s pop art does have an edge though, she talks of retro-futurist body music, of synth pop…

“Since first splashing on to the Southern California circuit in the mid-aughts, Geneva Jacuzzi (née Garvin) quickly cemented herself as the queen of the Los Angeles underground. Her immersive and unhinged multimedia performances are the stuff of legend, a psychotropic gallery of masks, costumes, confrontation, and massive art installations. Jacuzzi’s recordings are equally revered, catchy hooks and cryptic moods dusted in 4-track grit. The arrival of her third official full-length, and Dais Records debut, is cause for such celebration. Triple Fire vividly expands and crystallizes Jacuzzi’s signature fusion of midnight melody and mutant aerobics across a 12-track hit parade of wildcard synth-pop and sly post-apocalyptic camp.Her enthusiasm for the album is as bold as her body of work: “Halfway through, we started calling this the record of the prophecy, the record that’s going to save mankind.”

Kind of excited about the show up the street from us at the here at Moth Club, Frankie says go…

“Few artists embody the contradictions and possibilities of Los Angeles like Geneva Jacuzzi. A pioneer of low fidelity, bedroom recorded avant-pop, her work spans not only music, but performance art, live theater, set design, costuming, makeup, and set decoration – the auteur theory realized as ongoing art practice. She is simultaneously championed by underground venues, DIY spaces and art galleries, as well as prestigious institutions like The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), The Broad Museum, and The Getty. Across two decades of activity, Jacuzzi has toured her surrealist strain of theatrical synth-pop and staged dada exploratory installations in more than forty countries across the world”.

Links: Bandcamp / www.genevajacuzzi.com

And here’s a performance Future Choir by Geneva Jacuzzi from 2016 at MOCA.