Hugo Largo humbly gave birth to one of the seminal experiences of the 1980s. Armed with two basses and a violin (instead of the usual guitar-bass-drums lineup), they invented a sound that was both dreamlike and austere, almost a version of British dream-pop for classical music ensembles. Their music is some of the most psychological in rock history.
Hugo Largo was founded in 1986 by Tim Sommer, music critic and Glenn Branca's assistant, who put together a lineup with as many as two bassists (himself plus Adam Peacock, also a Branca collaborator), a violinist (Hahn Rowe, ditto), and most importantly singer and performance artist Mimi Goese.
On the first album Drum (Relativity, 1987 - All Saints, 1999) it is she who steals the show, with her ethereal vocals that bring back memories of San Francisco summers and raga-rock, while the three stringed instruments perform chamber rock music. It's a cross between It's A Beautiful Day and Penguin Cafe Orchestra. In some tracks (Grow Wild) the mood is deliberately neurotic, thanks to the convulsive minimalist pulse of the three strings and the extensive singing excursus of Goese's warbles.
In Eskimo Song, one of the most intangible compositions, Goese's singing manages to fuse and blend Joni Mitchell's soprano folk, the chanting of Japanese folk theater, the sustained tones of mantras, and even Donovan's naive storyteller rhymes. That heterogeneous melange of vocal styles knows how to soar into epic anthems over the commanding, liturgical lines of an organ and the minimalist counterpoints of strings (Fancy) or to close in Greek tragedy screams of pain propelled by martial harmonies of Wagnerian intensity (Second Skin).
Although imbued with the same sense of loneliness, Goese's voice can be seen as the exact opposite of Nico's: ecstatic instead of depressed, metaphysical instead of apocalyptic, ringing instead of androgynous, luminous instead of gloomy. Goese is a disciple of St. Francis, just as Nico was of Sartre. |
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