FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Bernardino Femminielli on How Dov Charney and Dark Nightlife Tales Inspired His Latest Album

The Montreal electronic lounge lizard welcomes listeners into his "cabaret 2.0" ​with 'Plaisirs Américains.'
Malo Lacroix

I first encountered the absurdist theatre of Bernardino Femminielli while living in Montreal in 2011. During that time, every live performance at a club or loft venue was a thrilling event. Dressed in a sleek black leather jacket, white disco suit, or head-to-toe denim, the artist's sinister sensuality blew away the average rock show. Whether backed up by band members, or flirting with audience members on his lonesome, each Femminielli show was different. Guided by Gainsbourg-esque whispers in Spanish and French, his personas combined the late Suicide frontman Alan Vega's electro-punk provocations with Giorgio Moroder's moustached charisma.

Advertisement

Following a series of attention-grabbing releases on labels like Hobo Cult, Fixture Records, or his own Los Discos Enfantasmes, 2012 resulted in Femminielli's first masterpiece with the ominous electronic opus, Double Invitation. The four years that followed saw him traveling the world as a touring member of Dirty Beaches, linking up with Montreal producer Jesse Osborne-Lanthier for the confrontational collaborative project Femminielli Noir—accidentally predicting former Toronto mayor Rob Ford's biggest scandal with their cover art of a hamburger and crack pipe—then facing an existential crisis.

While harboring thoughts of throwing in the musical towel, Femminielli met Montreal-via-Calgary artist and filmmaker Brett Stabler. Alongside Beaver Sheppard, a musician and chef whose CV included the menu creations of several of the city's top eateries, Stabler launched restaurant, venue, and eventual record label Bethlehem XXX in 2013. This space allowed Femminielli to reignite his love of performance, and also also resulted in a 2015 trip to Los Angeles. There, he followed Stabler to American Apparel founder Dov Charney's home while filming an experimental documentary.

"Dov Charney is a psychotic showman. We were intruding on his life but he liked that," Femminielli tells THUMP over Skype from his home in Montreal. "He never left his room, doing phone and video interviews naked, and didn't really care. In the long term it's obviously toxic, but it was fascinating to spend that time with him."

Advertisement

This tragic flip-side of the capitalist dream floats throughout Femminielli's latest record. The lush and musically dense Plaisirs Américains, produced by Dominic Vanchesteing, came out last spring as a joint release on Bethlehem XXX and Japan/France's MIND Records. Drawing on influences including the claustrophobic jazz-fusion of Miles Davis' Get Up With It, Iggy Pop and Grace Jones' guitar-grinding "Nightclubbing," and the bumps in the night of Greece's Lena Platonos, it's his most ambitious work to date.

Lyrically, Femminielli describes these songs as "bitter stories of people who give it all to their love of the nightlife." Like Transformer-era Lou Reed, the album's first-person narratives are based on real people he met in his troubled teenage years including drug addicts, strip club denizens, and male and female sex workers. However, as Femminielli explained to me in a 2011 interview, "I don't mean that I'm out doing weird things in real life, but the idea of them definitely excites me." These are cautionary tales, yet he is no stranger to temptation.

"Romanticizing my adventures from crack houses, hanging out with taxi boys, or accumulating sexual fiascos was the key to exorcise myself from all of it," he says. "It's scary because it gives you the temptation to go back there. I'm addicted to chaos."

Recent live shows refract the imagery of these stories through a funhouse mirror. Femminielli's latest costume changes include cowboy hats, blow-up dolls, and the bowtie and leather shorts of a Chippendales dancer. Plaisirs Américains was recorded in Montreal and Los Angeles with the soaring lead guitar of Bataille Solaire's Asaël Robitaille and the silky bass lines of Sheer Agony's Jackson Macintosh, but onstage its author prefers to strike out solo.

Advertisement

"I made this album to perform these songs live, but not necessarily with a band," he explains. "I wanted to create a mise-en-scène with the characters and storytellers. When you record an album, it's such a pain in the ass to compose with musicians. Afterwards, I prefer to edit it with a producer and create a performance with just myself, naked. That way, it's my vision completely."

"Musicians will play things the way I want them too, but they might not understand the concepts," Femminielli adds. "Sometimes I can adapt it, but people will give me pressure to do things a certain way because they think it will be amazing. It could be, but I'd prefer to get people behind a laptop or pretending to play guitar. It's just showtime. Throw some stars and dust on it and people will believe it. Of course it could be great with a band but I'm a little bit over that."

This month, MIND Records is set to reissue Plaisirs Américains, packaged with a limited edition 7". Recorded shortly after the album, Femminielli jokingly describes the pulsating "Cafe Petite Chatte" and hypnotic "Goodbye Blueboy" as "upbeat club songs." He will then hit the road for a series of solo shows with Toronto's Elliot Vincent Jones, before a trio of dates opening for late-60s electronic legends Silver Apples.

Gazing into the future, the Montreal artist mentions his formation of a new band. Joined by longtime collaborator Asaël Robitaille and Pierre Guerineau of Essaie Pas, he gleefully contradicts his previous statements with a concept he calls "cabaret 2.0."

"When I joke about not wanting a band, it's because I want to keep it pure," he says with a laugh. "These are people I trust who understand everything I want to do. It's not just about playing the songs; it's about the energy and the vision. There will be more improvisation and mistakes. When something can go wrong, that's really cool. It will be a spectacle where the songs live again and again."

Plaisirs Américains (Greek Edition) is available here via MIND Records and check out Femminielli's upcoming North American tour dates.

Jesse Locke is on Twitter.