Like his music, Larsovitch seems to be moving at full speed: since his first EP, released at the end of 2023 and re-released in the spring of 2024, the Montpellier artist has been playing a steady stream of concerts and making regular appearances in the news with new videos... and finally (already!) a second EP, Normal'No. As if driven by an avid inner fire, Larsovitch doesn't look back, except when it comes to resurrecting some 80s ghosts to shake them up and modernise them.
By opting for French, Larsovitch probably unintentionally gives Légions Perdues a hymn-like quality, while we are delighted to find again this biting minimalism, this radical approach that is both free and influenced (Larsovitch has his eye on what is happening in the Greek, Turkish and Russian darkwave scenes). The chanted text calls out to you, exuding a rage and urgency that warms the icy sound of its flames, a vivid sensitivity that slaps urban austerity in the face. Larsovitch is a unifying force, but it's clear that the tone is one of distrust towards leaders and smooth talkers, and the artist does nothing to make us follow him.
Amid the vitriolic assaults, Normal'No is haunted by a rainy melancholy, omnipresent but particularly explicit during Bonne Nuit before turning into palpable bitterness with Kryos Aeras. On discovering debut EP ΣΥΝΘ, we may have been wrong. Larsovitch's hot-headed attitude, his tendency to push us around, has more to do with a visceral or even possessed approach than with cheeky, delightful posturing: Normal'No doesn't leave much room for laughter. Its feverish intensity takes on the air of a race for survival, the survival of all those who don't fit into the ‘norm’, those ‘outsiders’ in the broadest sense. The tone darkens on the title track when the rhythm slows down and a climate of pre-apocalyptic revolt sets in, buoyed by hypnotic futuristic bass. It doesn't sound as if Larsovitch is sparing himself, and yet the tension of this second EP seems to be under control, the better to let the final Xenomorfos explode, a furious new anthem of punk aggression and explicit criticism of the xenophobia of the narrow-minded.
In the apparent dryness of his EBM / techno influences, Larsovitch is not narrow-minded. A mixture of references, eras, cultures and languages, he is a monster who is at once vindictive, flayed and viscerally sincere, with cathartic dances driven by the energy of despair. Uncompromising, slamming, sweat-inducing, but done with soul, the machines covered in guts.
