Daemönik Fonce is a group built around Welsh twins Stewart and Paul Summers, alongside Hanna Edgren, Sam Mansbridge, and drummer Andy Prestidge. Their debut album `Eye Love Daemönik Fonce` was released in 2022 and they release the follow up `DFll` this month.
`Oh Corita` kicks us off and it’s a love letter to the American nun, artist, and antiwar campaigner Corita Kent. Corita’s art was her activism, and her spiritually-informed social commentary promoted love and tolerance. The track itself is a blistering but melodic singalong anti-war anthem with the strap line of “Make love not war Fight war not wars” which will have you singing/shouting along to. I wasn`t too sure if `Test Tube Grappelli` was referring to some sort of laboratory led fertilisation experiment regarding the late French violinist Stéphane Grappelli whose flowing, relaxed playing style and improvisation helped elevate the genre of jazz violin in the 20th century, garnering him the nickname ‘grandfather of the jazz violin`. But it`s a mid-paced rock tinged offering that seems to touch on a pretty skewed relationships.
`Speck` has an almost synthy folky sea shanty vibe at times blended with a seventies glam rock ambience and appears to reflect on our insignificance on this planet. The rhythmic `On The Skids` begins with a Chicory Tip like key sound before swaying along with “ooh la la la” harmonies and put me in mind of the early eccentric Sparks numbers that I loved in my teen years.
`Solar Man` nodded towards early Roxy Music with its stop start jagged journey and sax hues but takes off into an odd reverie mid song. The title of `My Father’s Banana` conjures up Leslie Phillips fnarr fnarr innuendos but it’s a weirdly hypnotic tale of a parents first encounter with this elongated, edible fruit which were in short supply in early post war times.
`Chippin’ Away` I read is an ode to the Great British mindset of just about getting away with it and the countries favourite food fuel. It’s a cross between The Sweet and the Glitter band, absolutely glamtastic. We have a song that almost swings from side to side with and underlying rolling percussive beat in `The Human Leech` where an acquaintance who extorts profit from or sponges on others and is compared to an aquatic or terrestrial annelid worm with suckers at each end.
We have a kind of late nite jazzy feel to `Night Terrors` which tells of the mental anguish of suffering the parasomnia causing intense fear. The free-spirited, eclectic, and cozy nature of an unconventional lifestyle is the subject matter of `Provincial Bohemian` where Stewart and Hannah`s vocals complement and intertwine delightfully on this melodic earworm of a number.
The album closes with `The Great Epiphany` where an experience of a sudden and striking realisation or manifestation is questioned almost incredulously in a flummoxed “is that it??” manner, all shared in an accompanying rock stained aural sound .
`DFll` is a little strange but in a unique rather than bizarre way. It may be one of those albums that becomes a little clearer each time you return to listen. An experience that is quite difficult to categorise but well worth spending time to imbibe and take in.
Rating 8/10
