Dark Minimal Project isn't wasting any time: Pleasure Is a Sin is the darkwave duo's third album in almost as many years. A third album is often a good time to reevaluate and avoid getting stuck in a comfortable routine, to escape repetition. Despite their steady release schedule, Ange Vesper and Guillaume VDR understood this. Accompanied by Peter Rainman (People Theatre) on arrangements and co-production, the two artists infuse their music with new energy: you'll dance, of course, but not in the same way as before.
Rest assured, however, that the melancholy we loved in their previous works is still there. However, the synthpop influences have mutated into something harder, darker, which we feel exploding from Staring Away and creeping into the shadows of In My Veins. With its threatening, contained rage and haunting choruses, Dark Minimal Project has raised the tone and opted for a more in-your-face approach. The 80s nostalgia is still there, but modernized with a sense of catchiness that hits the mark. It brings to mind Ash Code, Aux Animaux, Dancing Plague... There is nostalgia, of course, but also nerve and muscle (that we noticed that right away from the artwork!).
We are then gladly swept away by Spoke to the Devil and its blend of EBM intensity and retro dance beats. Dark Minimal Project brings out the disco ball and summons a whole host of demons to dance under the spotlights... The duo mixes aesthetics and universes, mastering contrasts while allowing a few cracks to show in vocals that are always expressive and emotionally charged. After the demonic fiesta, So Far Away is a dreamy wander in the rain, where we appreciate the added emphasis provided by the background vocals, spectral echoing choirs that haunt the music with their melancholy until a mysterious finale with cinematic potential that gives us a glimpse of what Dark Minimal Project could achieve with atmospheric instrumental tracks... and it would look great!
Throughout the album, we pass through worlds that are as dreamlike as they are concrete, mixing poetry and the torments of everyday life, inner demons, fantasized demons... and demonic fantasies. Thus, the urban coldness evoked by the futuristic structures of the cover of This City rubs shoulders with the strange hallucinatory ghosts of Frozen Times: worlds rooted in reality and more ethereal visions intermingle throughout the journey. Dark Minimal Project also expresses its taste for the tension between opposites that complement each other with Blanc & Noir. Pleasure is a sin, the album title tells us. The verdict is therefore final: not only are we guilty, but we are not ashamed of it. It was a pleasure to wander the sad alleys of this album, to appreciate its frozen souls in torment as well as the more festive flashes that explode like a declaration (yes, we're partying and yes, we're sad, so what!). And if pleasure is a sin, let's not forget that sinning is also a pleasure!
