Madrid’s The Kiss That Took A Trip pulls back the curtain on the creation and inspiration behind each song on ‘Victims of the Avantgarde’
Last week, we shared with you the eclectic delight of ‘Victims of the Avantgarde’, the new album from virtuoso The Kiss That Took A Trip.
The latest in the Madrid musician’s sprawling discography, the album found him at his most refined, delivering a love letter to the 90s that touched on everything from shoegaze to orchestral ambience.
It’s a voluminous body of work, to the point where a simple listen might not be enough to fully appreciate its richness. That’s why we had the artist himself swing by Happy for a breakdown of each track.
Catch The Kiss That Took A Trip’s full track-by-track below, and scroll down to listen to ‘Victims of the Avantgarde’ in full.
‘(God Bless Our) Holy Highways’
The album opens with a tale about seduction, betrayal and poisonous love. Lyrically, it’s built upon baroque verses that feel vaguely gothic.
Starting with a barrage of electronics but soon opting for a laid back arrangement of echoey instrumentation, the song does the job of hinting at the overall sound of the record without giving away too much.
A simple and melodic chorus, an extended bridge in which a piano takes centre stage, accompanied with funky bass, tambourines and soft backing vocals, all of them setting a mood that might be traced back even to Depeche Mode’s Songs of faith and devotion, but with a fuzzier tone.
‘Sound and Immaculate’
My unending love for the 90s is heavily showcased on this song, and it’s possibly the guiltiest pleasure on the record, even if it clocks at almost seven minutes.
The track manages to set itself up as the meat and potatoes of the album, a calculated blend of sounds that, although nostalgic to an extent, grips the listener by fusing industrial guitars and melodic synth beats with ease.
It delivers a very palatable callback to the closing decade of the 20th century. Its content is heavily personal. It’s about letting go of somebody before physical and mental damage leave incurable aftereffects.
‘Skull and Crossbones’
This is, by far, the most straightforward song I’ve ever released. It’s gritty but uplifting, short and to the point, and a good lead single of high replay value.
A simple arrangement of rock elements with some embellishment of strings, glockenspiel and synths, in service of a traditional verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure that keeps building momentum until the chorus explodes with a bang of dubious joy.
This track hides a much less enthusiastic worldview, though. I’ve always taken action in favor of humanitarian societies and against the excess of capitalism gone-too-far.
But lately I’ve given up, and not being ashamed of saying that openly is exactly what the song is about.
‘The Truth About Lucifer’
The most minimalistic song on Victims of the avantgarde features a slow electronic pulse, delicate electric guitar and intermittent mournful strings, all of them giving shape to an unorthodox structure.
The song tells a tale of impending emotional disaster: the death throes of a relationship, the refusal to cope with failure and the awkward nature of affection during that final stage.
The verses float on top of a structure that feels elusive throughout its running time. Musical motifs emerge, go away and reappear in one of the more vocally complex songs I’ve ever recorded.
Even if it might feel simple when you listen to it, I can tell you that it was definitely a pain to record and get right.
‘The Dailies’
This tune is extremely special for me and has a nice backstory. I wrote the embryo of this song when I was 14 years old, and in its original inception it was a corny piano ballad about heartbreak.
It remained inside my mental drawers for many years waiting for its moment to come. Finally, I managed to shape it and elevate it for its inclusion in this fourth long play. Its basis is a repetitive piano riff that gives way to a succession of gentle melodies.
Sweet, acoustic and emotional, The dailies unveils the most sensitive side of me, using guitar, piano and strings, although electronic elements come back in all of its glory in its hopeful coda. Its themes are universal: birth, day to day struggles and death.
‘Wronged’
The first half of the album comes to an end with a spacey song of layered guitars and delays iterating a simple structure that, slowly but steadily, works as an extensive but subtle crescendo of intensity and vindictive feelings.
With its juxtaposition of candid melodies and nefarious ruminations, I think that Wronged is a grower that counterbalances the emotional intensity that still reverberates from the previous track.
The lyrics deal with our darkest side, especially the one that finds pleasure in wishing bad to others, with guilt shining through the vocals here and there.
Coming to terms with this gloomy element of our personalities is necessary, and also reveals our weaknesses and insecurities.
‘Gordian Knot’
Gordian knot is a sturdy electronic beat varnished with heavily distorted guitars. An obsessive mid tempo that serves as a foundation for equally obsessive lyrics about that contemporary omnipresent cancer that forced optimism is.
The tune harkens back to the old times where industrial dance tracks were not something to frown upon, and it signals a turn in the sonic mood of the second half of the album.
This is one of the most in-your-face songs I’ve ever written, and regardless of whether you share the cheeky message in its lyrics or not, it should get you pumped up one way or another. 75 % Leftfield and 25 % Rammstein, this is a tune I’m really proud of.
‘Irma Vep’
A self-delusional tale about loneliness with an expansive chorus and a persistent and kind of retro futuristic synth sequence that doesn’t get in the way of traditional rock instrumentation coupled with cinematic strings.
A brief and simple tune that, upon closer inspection, reveals more subtle complexities and layers. The melodies in verses and choruses feel like siblings, the offspring of an invisible parental musical motif that looms over the whole composition.
The song speaks about how we shamelessly disguise unwanted loneliness as something we’ve chosen. As a vague metaphor, that loneliness is anthropomorphized as the old character Irma Vep from the 1915 French silent TV series Les vampires.
‘Blue Is the Flame’
A polyhedric six minute track in which electronica, acoustic balladry and orchestral arrangements take turns to paint a musical picture about unsuccessfully trying to find your place.
This one is another of the flagships of the album. Examining the lyrics one can find a shy exploration of how embarrassing it feels to be absolutely aware that you’re still looking for your place in the world even at a mature age, when you’re supposed to already have established meaningful connections with other people.
The sad reality of life is that, most of the time, many of those relationships feel void or, even worse, circumstantial. Meandering through life wondering what’s inside other people’s minds and how they relate to yours is the core of Blue is the flame.
‘Tears of a Demo’
The cheekiest song on Victims of the avantgarde, Tears of a demo deploys itself mechanically, in a way that equally feels as ambiental as industrial, but avoiding noise and embracing a more chill out mood.
Warm vocals work as a narration of vignettes about nightlife, frivolousness, physical attraction, intoxication and, generally speaking, the thin line that divides what’s socially accepted and what has to be enjoyed behind the scenes.
In a way, it’s also about coming to terms with the secret side of ourselves, our darkest wishes and our hypocrisy. The appeal of the forbidden pulses through the verses until it explodes in an acid chorus that speaks of disenchantment.
Under an appearance of levity, the song might be the bleakest one on the album.
‘Velvet Wall’
This track steps on virtually unknown musical territory for me. A slow and scruffy song that brings images of nicotine and liquor fueled rock bands singing about one night stands.
Drunk grungy guitars, sober drums and organ paint a musical backdrop for sleepy vocals that intermittently go on and off key, talking about a half baked love for a woman that made questionable choices in her life.
The song completes its tribute to past eras of rock by fading out, something that is considered an anathema in contemporary times, but a trick I use often.
The song is a good appetizer for the closing track and a display of attitude that it’s hard to see coming.
‘Whoop Whoop! Pull Up!’
The album comes to a close with an extremely personal song for me.
Profound sadness disguised as the electronic version of a Broadway musical could be a nice description for Whoop whoop! Pull up!, a cautionary tale about epic and ill-advised fights between the brain and the heart.
The songwriting in this one digs into sinful recent experiences and it’s the most I’ve opened myself in front of an audience, ever.
A tune about doing the right thing at the very last minute in order to prevent a very wrong future, but paying an immense emotional cost in the process. Renouncing all your wishes and desires to avoid a likely catastrophe.
The track sounds big even if it uses minimal instrumentation, and its final moments overflow with bitter thoughts about everything that could’ve been.
