Once, in the very beginning of my life as a certifiable madman, I happened across the band Cinema Strange... needless to say, the mesh 'twixt ear and spirit was complete... Or should I explain?
Their official date of conception is February 2, 1994. They were a smashing four-piece then: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals... and they liked to refer to themselves as "gothic dirgists". Real BATCAVE. This is slightly hilarious when taken into consideration the fact that all four were shooting spit-balls in grade school when that great English night spot was at it's heyday. However, they weren't entirely inaccurate with their self-description. With a sound reminiscent of early Sex-Gang, coupled with the outright STRANGENESS of the Virgin Prunes, here was an American band in the '90s who boasted everything we savored about the British bands of the '80s.
They very quickly lit upon the scene, and by fall of '94 had performed in club venues with Trance To The Sun, the Sudden, and innumerable punk bands. They released a self-produced, five-song cassette which sold out completely... in fact, mine is an eigth-generation copy so graciously donated by the Prince of the English Cinema Strange Intellectual Society, Master James Powell, out of Rochdale. Also, several stickers and T-shirts managed to find similar success on domestic and foreign markets.
However, it was a brief surge of energy for them, and by December of '94, rifts between members led to a complete halving. The only ones left, after the dust had settled and the flames were extinguished, were the bassist, one D. Allan Ribiat, and the singer, Lucas Lanthier.
And that was that... for a time. The two survivors took a much-needed hiatus from the hectic world of show-biz, only to meet up again, months later in the summer of '95 to plan for something new... something different...
And so here we have the latest installation of Cinema Strange: a two-man sojourn into the maw of madness. And with a stage show that brings forth a vision of institutionalized noblemen sacrificing faeries in the fog, it doesn't quite leave the realm of the Jabberwock... rest assured.
But have they taken the underworld by storm? Only very subtly. Only as the dank breath of a zombie may slowly drift from a child's closet and permeate the air until the hapless victim is stricken with a sudden and unexplainable fear. Subtle, the way a rat in the basement may send all twenty-eight of your grandmother's cats into a quiet frenzy... two stories up. Yes, they've taken the underworld... perhaps by whisper. And this is entirely intentional. They've taken a vow of infamy, part of which seems to have dealt with the paranoia of selling out. And as a result, their two-song demo tapes, and self-produced E.P. "Acrobat Amaranth Automaton" are being discussed all across the U.S. and now, in Manchester. (You're welcome, lads.) I've got a T-shirt. I've got stickers... and yet I've seen them only once. That was at the Roxy in Hollywood in '96. They've opened for Switchblade Symphony three times, they've played with Sunshine Blind, Johnny Indovina, the Wake, Faith and Disease, and Gitane DeMone, to name a few. Not to mention their own special performances at Coven 13 in Hollywood, and clubs Vampiricus and Sacrilege in Long Beach, California.
Up and coming? Oh, yes. Craftily underground? Shudderingly so.
They've traced their polished nails across the throats of thousands, they've reminded us what it used to be like when the world was post-punk, and the live show coming up on the weekend was UK Decay and the Southern Death Cult. They breathe the aura of the Sex Gang and spit it out through string sections and screaming crescendoes... It's nice, I think, to finally have a couple of lunatics to depend on in this uncertain decade. Let's hope they stick around for a while!
-Retch Dempsey, January '98