It’s not easy to leave the comfort of your own little vault or coffin to venture out into brighter surroundings. Yet we decided to give it a try. Picture the scene: a pop party at Supersonic, a hotspot for Parisian hipsters who love getting in for free to talk loudly while drinking beer as bands play—and on a holiday, no less! But what on earth were we doing in this mess? Well, we were going to see Lucy Dreams, an Austrian trio we’d discovered just before Empathy Test and Black Nail Cabaret two years ago in London (live report). On the way, we tried to reassure ourselves: come on, it’ll still be a little dark, a little tortured! Besides sharing the bill with bands used to playing gothic festivals, Lucy Dreams just released the album VVVVV, which was mastered by Slade Templeton of the cold wave/industrial duo Crying Vessel—no small feat!
Now, THAT was a culture shock! When you get to Supersonic, you run into all kinds of weird people. People wearing beige shirts tucked into their pants and colorful dresses, gathering in groups to talk loudly and bellow the lyrics to a song that’s playing—something we’re told is called Terror Swift or something like that, never heard of it. Luckily, at one point, we can hear some Joy Division—no one’s singing along, but it’s a huge breath of fresh air. We arrive too late to see the opening acts, but we catch a quick glimpse: people smiling, in good spirits, singing along to songs everyone seems to know. Apparently, the band is dressed up as pirates. The Verdammnis Incroporated delegation consisted of two people tonight, and depending on who you ask, you’ll get the following answers: “Yeah, it was awful, it was all just music from commercials” or “Nooo, it’s super famous—it’s Mamma Mia and Flashdance!”. We prefer to stay in the back, far away from all these people, reminiscing about every episode of Daria we can think of.
Shortly after 10 p.m., Lucy Dreams takes the stage and captures the audience’s attention even before they begin. Of course, there’s the look of the human members, with their oversized clothes and colorful, futuristic makeup… and then there’s Lucy, the third member, a ball of light sitting enthroned at the center of the stage. Lucy is both a cool stage prop that helps immerse the audience in this dreamlike universe and a thematic tool: in VVVVV, Lucy Dreams tells the story of humanity’s entry into a fifth dimension where intuition merges with technology in a harmonious way and where human creativity and machines evolve together without the latter replacing our emotions with automated prompts.
Well, that’s a change for us. We’re all familiar with the relationship between humans and machines: machines enslave us, crush us, and we merge with them in a cyberpunk storm of suffering à la Tetsuo... Except here, no—no suffering, no human slaves! In a way, with their approach, Lucy Dreams highlights how futuristic worlds and works of speculative fiction in general have tended, over the past few decades, to remind us that our end is near—to the point where, by trying too hard to criticize our current shortcomings, they might come across as a bit too easily reactionary and anti-technological progress. Lucy Dreams displays a refreshing optimism. Their approach is thoughtful, and for them, pop isn’t just a string of lazy, interchangeable formulas. They mention Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, and Bowie as influences; there’s that slightly offbeat, arty edge, that desire to offer the audience a cohesive whole blending music, concept, and stage presence.
All of this is, of course, very vibrant but also particularly endearing. Lucy Dreams exudes that quirky, surreal, and poetic vibe—full of hope yet not without a touch of melancholy. David Reiterer, aka Zero, regularly hands the mic to Lucy, breaking up the set into theatrical segments. Some tracks stick in your head (like Motor), and our attention is inevitably drawn to the almost noise-like dissonances of Calore, which takes on a more industrial edge live. In the crowd, people are dancing, but not staring at the floor with a bored look on their faces. They make terrifying grimaces, something that lifts the corners of their mouths upward; apparently it’s called a smile, it sounds a bit like “smite,” it must be painful. Everyone seems to be feeling some kind of incomprehensible emotion, as if being in a good mood brings joy. It’s weird.
You know the Geiger counter, the device that measures radiation? We need an equivalent for positive vibes—something we could call the Eldritch counter, the Dracula counter, the Morgendorffer counter, whatever—something that warns you when you’re about to get bombarded by other people’s good vibes. Because in this case, there’s no doubt about it: the exposure was concerning! Nevertheless, Lucy Dreams remains a unique act worth seeing, a group of quirky dreamers with a thoughtful live performance. Their signature dreamlike touch takes them out of reality; they do indeed have that gently lost air, as if they’ve come from another era. With their generosity and their great show, they’re essentially telling us, “We come in peace”—a message that won’t end in a laser beam massacre. It’s a nice change !
