Junkie Flamingos — Lemegeton Party

The Helen Scarsdale Agency imprint presents Lemegeton Party, the debut album from Junkie Flamingos. Formed in 2017, Junkie Flamingos are a collaborative venture by sound artists Luca Sigurtà, Alice Kundalini (She Spread Sorrow), and Daniele Delogu (Barbarian Pipe Band). While I can't profess to have much familiarity with Delogu's and Sigurtà's previous output, I am quite familiar with She Spread Sorrow. Writing quite glowingly of Kundalini's work in the past, I was intrigued to see this appear in my review pile. Available in vinyl and digital formats, Lemegeton Party is inspired by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s novel Hyperion.

Lemegeton Party offers five tracks that cannot easily be distilled into a particular genre, however a foundation of dark ambient and death industrial might be a meaningful starting point.

The album begins with "Evening of Our Days", a deeply organic sounding piece. It's overcast, moments before a thunderstorm, atmospheric ambience and distant rumbling fills my ear holes while Kundalini's signature spoken, near whispered, vocals add a foreboding layer to the soundscape. Contrast that with "Goetia" which takes a cold and mechanical tract. A persistent sound that is equal parts rotary phone and robotic insectoid chirping makes up the framework of this track. Coupled with hollow sounding beats and Kundalini's mechanized vocals, the piece has an overall menacing and artificial vibe.

"Shape of Men" takes a very minimal turn with its bleak, plodding beats and a measured, consistent ringing of a bell. The appropriately titled "Restless Youth", is the most rhythmic piece on the album and something I can imagine being played in the darkest dungeons of european discotechs. Lemegeton Party concludes with "The Language of Slaves". It's another cold and eerie left turn and the noisiest track on the album. A thin beat collides with some very processed (robotic) vocals, while a swarm of constrained chaos resides in the back drop.

Throughout its many permutations Lemegeton Party is a consistently great record from start to finish. No disrespect to the other players involved, but this could easily be mistaken for the new album by She Spread Sorrow and that my friends is a very good thing indeed.