NEOANGIN aka Jim Avignon

Neoangin (aka Jim Avignon) is back with new shows and a new album, which he’s releasing—as usual—on his own, complete with a cover he designed himself, including a fold-out poster. DIY charm at its best.

“forever coming of age”—the title of the new record—is, if you will, a concept album that explores the deep longing for eternal youth. “Coming of age” describes a person’s development from childhood to adulthood (according to Wikipedia) and is a genre frequently explored in films and novels. Avignon, too, is occasionally overcome by the feeling that he has never truly left his teenage years behind, yet at the same time can already see the end in the distance. He sets this dilemma—as a way of life—to music in his usual personal songs, which these days also frequently take a political turn. Especially with “still in love with a world that destroys itself,” he captures the prevailing spirit of the times with unsettling precision. Jim remains a hopeless optimist, even as the world goes to hell.

Neoangin experimented early on with distilling electronic sounds and singer-songwriting into a sound all their own, and on “forever coming of age” they once again reach the peak of their form. His trademark is an ambivalence—rare in the music world—between euphoria and melancholy, which gives the Neoangin sound that certain something—a sound that immediately takes you on a journey.  On top of that—the “one-man home electronics band” has since become a two-man combo. Joining him is drummer Martin Petersdorf, who adds the necessary dash of chaos to Neoangin’s unmistakable DIY electropop and occasionally lets the songs drift into dub-inspired territory.

You get the best sense of it, however, when you experience Neoangin on stage: the live shows are excellent entertainment—sound, stage sets, masks, and absurd ideas—in two minutes, they take you from party to crisis to euphoria to madness to grief to “Ciao”—excellent entertainment that transcends all known genres.