Welcome To The Twisted Cabaret Vol. 1

Formed with the aim of uniting “some of the most important modern artists who are using, altering or diverting the codes and rules of Weimar Cabaret” this release attempts to capture those memorable nights we’ve dined out on as young, vibrant, beautiful people. Personally, I’m a twisted middle-aged hack and the idea of going to a burlesque club or going to see an off-the-wall circus act fills me with nothing but horror. Consequently, I knew little of what to expect and so found myself pleasantly surprised and enjoying the controversial Brechtian and Gypsy cabaret of The Tiger Lillies, the fuzzed blues and screwball poetics of The Maxi Monster Music Show and the talented Japanese duo Kokusoyu Sumire and their fairytale re-imaginings.The DVD generally mirrors the artists on the CD but often we find ourselves peeking in on different songs. And peek in we do, slightly removed from the show, as one would feel when viewing a reel of YouTube videos. The main crux here, inevitably, is to promote these little known bands and as a consequence there’s the sense that it’s all just trailer promos building up to some unseen main act. Often we’re in the audience which helps, but when we are discarded back to a position in front of the television store, it‘s hard to feel involved.Setting the scene those naughty Tiger Lilies introduce us to the idea of a bearded lady producing “an elephant out of her snatch” but with some relief I spy that they have carved their show up into non-PC snaps of three-legged men, Siamese twins, buxom wenches and a host of dwarfs doing gymnastics. The simple comedy of Evelyn Evelyn is sweet enough to endear them to the listener but the insipid mime in monochrome of Budam tends to have much the opposite effect. It’s a big old bag of oddities, some more enjoyable than others. There’s disturbing sights and some disturbed characters but there’s very little to really grab the attention despite the compilation title suggesting otherwise - De Kift’s incredible Hollywood-quality short, ‘Beguine‘, an artistic masterpiece, aside.Nay, without the aid of cruddy computer imagery or whiplash videography attempting to reach the parts that other cameras don’t reach, the tracks on the CD allow the imagination to wander a little more - a place where anything is possible. Make sure you check out tracks like the combined stylus crackle and soft bedtime vocal on The Real Tuesday Weld’s ‘The Sweetest Songs’, or the new-wave swing of Katzenjammer Kabarett’s ‘Saylor Sandham’s Sister’. From Dutch punk to French art-pop it’s a bit of a whistle-stop world tour of the bizarre, but there are a few stops you may just fancy getting off and lingering at awhile.