Sunday, June 1, 2014

The Passion of Paris at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Paris Obscur is the embodiment of passion as you hear it in his voice, his words, his hard-core guitar. He wasn't sure if I meant 'hard-core' as a good thing but I hear unrestrained, raw, powerful.  Paris doesn't dance around the periphery, collecting flowers, and painting landscapes.  He goes for the heart of it and a great many people have been discovering this.


The deep sexuality of Paris Obscur songs is more honest than most can manage about sex but he tells of how things are, how they can be, and even how they should not be.  He does not give any lessons but he tells stories and you can learn from them what you will.  The passion is not only in how he sings the song but in the depth of the content to them.  When he gets inside the mind of rapist, maybe it triggers revulsion but this is only a different kind of passion.

There is a growl in Paris' voice that is unmistakable and he is brilliant at keeping it musical.  He pushes it so hard that he strains his voice by the end of a show as he is so fully-engaged, physically, emotionally, spiritually.  These are not just words as Paris feels his body at the height of its powers when he sings on-stage.  He very much feels the 'liveness' of a show as much as the audience and that audience has been steadily growing.

A 'hard-core' guitar has been turning up more frequently in Paris' songs and this is giving a whole new rawness.  It's not an incoherent grunge but rather it's a good, powerful statement and he does it very well.  After listening to the musicians at Cat's Art MusikCircus for some while, I hear the evolution in their music.  At first there was no electric guitar in his songs but it has been visiting more frequently and it's a very well-selected complement to his sound.

Paris has doubled his performance schedule and will now perform every two weeks at the MusikCircus.  You can find a lot more about him on the Paris Obscur Web site.

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