Phantom Love ~ Crave For Lust

Phantom Love is the pseudonym of Italian experimental artist Valentina Fanigliulo. Crave For Lust is a dark, shrouded beast that shirks the light.

Light, minimal beats echo through to the other side, through the thick fog of reverb. The fangs have just enough power and attack to strike incisively and accurately, clamping down onto the struggling melody as if she were hunted prey, chopping into the music with its pounding 4/4 beat. A dark, disoriented synth swirls drunkenly, as if it had just swallowed pints of the predator’s poison.

Crave For Lust is haunting in every sense of the word, but it is not stalked by the supernatural. Instead, the music is plagued (in a good way) by the phantoms on the street. The regular sin seeps its way into the skin; the sultry look in the eye, or the attractive girl that flirts with your imagination, the lingering lust that abides within, despite her relationship status. Psychedelic undertones hint at psychotic intentions. Blurry rhythms frenetically splice against one another, seeming to add to the fraught state of a fragile, hurt mind; their solid rhythms never cease to beat, pounding away until the craving is satisfied. Darker infatuations rise to the fore, tunneling through to the surface with a snaking, monotone melody. And the inner rhythmical workings are puzzling, because while the melody never seems to go anywhere, it moves at an incredible rate of speed, rushing through the music as if it were high on E.

The obsessive compulsions, the consuming, forbidden passions, are voiced through the struggling synths and warped arpeggios that are, in turn, caged by their own addiction. “Power And Passion” drops the voice box into the electronic void, but the human element remains under the tight control of the beat, the first tempting flirt and resulting kiss that left the victim locked behind the cell of guilt and betrayal.

Crave For Lust lurks between the borders of early electronic experimentation, inspired techno, kraut-rock and a splash of synth-heavy dark wave, while shining a sliver of dim light on the bleak future with its gleaming neon-lit vice. The synths feel tired, skirting in and out of the boundaries and looking as if they’re lost in what should be familiar surroundings. This is Valentina Fanigliulo’s last illusion, because the synths are already dead. (James Catchpole)

Available here