the first time of En Velours Noir live

20 years ago (just a month away) I entered a professional studio to record and completely re-arrange the first demo of En Velours Noir by myself, swiped 2 days before by some friends / members who didn’t feel like recording something that didn’t play “Like John or Jack Doe”. That cassette with pieces of a disorienting heterogeneity and difficult stylistic cataloging (on my part in the first place) instead attracted the attention of many zines usually forced to review Spaghetti Black Metal or yet another serial flirtatious gimmick, but who intuited more than I realized then and they pushed me to go on. Someone then told me to feel “Jake Doe“ 🙂 … in some cases, citing names never heard in my life (but that’s the beauty of exegesis, in all forms); others would later decree me as an inventor of genres (eg Dark Tango); but the most incisive episode was the fact that tape captured the courageous imagination of what was then my first historical producer, now a brother, to whom I also owe the credit for making me understand that in a specious universe like that which I have defined as “understream” what matters first of all and everyone is dignity: never sell out, pursue your own style, protect your creativity, quickly cleanse yourself of blood.

What I share is the first modest audio-visual testimony of the first live performance under the name En Velours Noir, on June, 25th ; in some ways on the occasion of the maturation of a new expressive path, always with a rétro taste, but for me “again” difficult to catalog (as long as it is needed). Happened by chance. Left to chance. But it is no coincidence that he has kept it for me and you who are reading and perhaps listening.