Today’s Sounds: Femminielli

Record:

Femminielli, Double Invitation (Desire)

 
Originally written for Craigslist Missed Connections:

El Último Tango – m4w – 28

I don’t usually do things like this — I’m never this impulsive — but I can’t stop thinking about you these days, and it’s driving me to depths of despair I can no longer endure. The thing is, we haven’t met yet. Or maybe we have. It’s all so hazy, but I keep picturing that one night; you were with your friends at one end of the dark room, and I at the other end with mine. Drowning in a sea of strangers, and with the smoke of cigarettes engulfing the room and obscuring every detail, we found each other. It was just a few furtive glances at first, but I kept being drawn to your inescapable presence. Your joie de vivre as you laughed off a friend’s undoubtedly terrible joke. The way you effortlessly brushed back your raven strands to prevent them from falling into your beer. Each glance lasted a fraction of a second longer than the last, until it became simply too unbearable to look away.

Fragments of this night continue to swim in my subconscious. I can remember tactile sensations, emotions, but not facts. When was this fateful encounter, and where? It feels so long ago, yet it stings with the pain of a fresh wound. It was an after-hours venue that’s long since closed — I remember leaving and the sun was already rising. And I remember the music — it was Italo-Disco, rhythmic, hypnotic, foreboding and dangerous. Sexy, even. I’ll never forget how your perfect figure sensuously swayed to the music. Your beauty was cosmic, primordial, I’d never felt so close to the heavens. The performers on stage, and the strangers dancing around us, were reduced to blurry shadows. It was just you and me there, and I could sense you felt the same way.

At one point, we got painfully close. It started with your shoulder brushing against mine, or was it the other way around? That initial moment of blissful contact stopped time dead in its tracks, and then I whispered something in your ear, in Spanish, and it came from a place deep en mi corazon I’d been too scared to explore before, and it sounded like timeless poetry. The look of warmth and mischief in your wide, brown eyes said more than words ever could. You understood me, and I you.

We never saw each other again, and sometimes I feel like that night never even happened, that you were some figment of my hyperactive imagination. But, as I said, I’ve never felt this way before, so I’m willing to wait for you, and every time I turn a corner I’ll half expect to see you standing there, as if you’ve been waiting for me all this time. Until then, my mysterious love.

E
 

Track:

Kwes, “Rollerblades”

 
U.K. singer/producer Kwes follows up his minimal Meantime EP on Warp Records with a more accessible assembly of vocals, beats and piano. It’s understated still, but so savoury and more than a little sweet.
 

 

Video:

Mac DeMarco, “Ode to Viceroy”

 
On his record 2, Montrealer Mac DeMarco penned a paean one of the cheapest cigarette brands available off-res, and this video’s celebration of lo-fi analog life (directed by Jasper Baydala) is perhaps its perfect complement. Just try to fix the tracking up in this bitch.