Blakula - Permanent Midnight

Blakula!
Permanent Midnight
BEAR FUNK

The year is 1977. A black vampire who was born in Haiti, frozen in Transylvania has been de-thawed in New York City. Our blood-sucking friend has delved so far into human culture he actually believes to be human. He’s written poems with William Burroughs, and jammed with Miles Davis and Velvet Underground. He’s graffitied with Jean Michel Basquiat and danced with Andy Warhol at Studio 54. He’s partaken in every pleasure and sin NYC has to offer before succumbing to “the city sickness.” He is Blakula! Actually, he is the moniker/character represented by Andrea Bellentani and Simon Maccari, aka The Diaphanoids, who released their last full-length Astral Weekends on Stevie Kotey’s Bear Funk label. Where Astral Weekends was a blizzard of funky disco produced with a variety of vintage synths, Bellentani and Maccari took the opposite approach with their new project, and recorded Permanent Midnight entirely with live musicians.

While the story of Blakula (pulled from the press release) may seem strange, Permanent Midnight makes a strikingly sound effort at recreating it musically, even without using vocals. Witches Crew we can assume is the ‘jamming with Miles Davis’ part of the story, and kicks off the album with a funky bassline among shrieks of what sound like ghouls, before descending into some erratic sustained piano. It prods right along into Vampire State Building, a jazzy freak-out of horns that sounds part prog-rock, part disco, part horror movie. Any Soul You Could Buy jumps in with a Western twist and rides along the twangs of a guitar. It quickly bounces into Miss Morgue, a more disco-oriented effort reminiscent of the work of !!!, a sound that carries over into Feed Your Demons. Surrender to the Shadows seems to evoke the ‘city sickness’ Blakula suffers at some point in his New York bender. Slowly rolling to the wails of a saxophone and tinkering piano, one can imagine the vampire protagonist staggering about the streets, cold, alone, and disortiented, he stumbles to the curb where he passes out face down.

The album may clock in at just over thirty-five minutes, but the story Bellentani and Maccari are able to fabricate through jazz-infused psychedelic disco make it seem quite longer. The twists and turns the album brings in its genre hopping and crossing provide for a fascinating listen, and even more so when you try to determine which part of Blakula’s story is being told in each track. At the very least, the album will serve as the perfect soundtrack to your Halloween party this year, and show all the dudes dressed as Edward from Twilight how vampires really get down.

Justin Peczkowski

Blakula - Miss Morgue by Bearfunk

Tracklisting: Blakula! - Permanent Midnight
1. Witches Crew
2. Vampire State Building
3. Where The Angels Fear To Tread
4. Any Soul You Could Buy
5. Miss Morgue
6. Feed Your Demons
7. Blood Supreme
8. Slash Me Tender
9. Surrender To The Shadows
10. Permanent Midnight

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