The new album doesn't shift the sound coordinates of the New York duo, fiercely independent for over 35 years, but it rekindles distant, still warm ashes of the no wave of the past, in the cauldron of Lower Manhattan.

You're hanging around the Brooklyn area, near the (now unfortunately closed) Sputnik club, where in 2007 Iconoclast played, projecting our “Con gli occhi di domani” behind them. The early June heat slightly blurs the hazy skyline of the Big Apple, while you think of James White, David Thomas who unfortunately have stopped barking their worries between CBGB's (also closed, alas) and Knitting Factory.

For those of you born in Italy, these are black and white visions filtered by the surrealist and nervous super 8 video cameras of no wave directors like Richard Kern, Nick Zedd and Amos Poe (a few examples below). By Susan Seidelman before she exploded with Madonna from Studio 54.

Then, suddenly, a languor of melancholic sax passes through the air reaching your ears. It is Memory Park, probably the most poignant and atmospheric song of Cobalt Confidential.

So we are in 2025, as if those times had never passed. In a filthy loft in the Bowery Zorny Galàs, the sulfurous Lithuanian guru of theatrical experimentation pampered by the SoHo punk scene, stages his ferocious performances full of bloody mannequins hanging upside down. A few people sit on the cushions looking for the beyond in his "Theater of Damnation" together with the beardless protégé Alvaro Cortez, but they are the young Jim Jarmusch, still on "permanent vacation", Abel Ferrara who is ruminating on his Driller Killer , so close to the Buio in Scena by Galàs; and then Lydia Lunch, John Lurie, the synth genius Brain Eno, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. All of them would soon be talked about a lot. Everyone swears they saw the mannequins move by themselves during the performance...

Two minor punk comets like Judy Nylon and Patti Palladin, who in those days scream over the guitar licks of Johnny Thunders, are tempted to join the cast of a video performance with the provisional title of "Panthers Hugs", from which the director Beth B (under a trailer) would very much like to make a 16 mm film, of which unfortunately every trace has now been lost.

The Iconoclast sax is progressively surrounded by the harmonies of the synthesizer played by drummer Leo Ciesa, dissonant like when the (driller) killer comes forward on the crime scene in the B movies so viscerally loved by all the protagonists of the scene. Cobalt Confidential, the latest album by the New York duo, does not deviate from the sound coordinates followed by Iconoclast from the distant 1989 until today (we met them in Reggio Emilia in 1995): a postmodern free jazz at the crossroads between art punk (Comfort Me?) and contemporary music

It is composed, recorded and produced by the sole owners Joslyn/Ciesa (in the photos above taken in the studio) like its predecessors, practically live in the studio, using only the instruments that the two also juggle in concert: sax and violin, vocals and live electronics for her, drums and percussion, plus keyboards and piano for him.

Iconoclast: "Our creative process hasn't changed much over the years," they explained to us: "We rehearse regularly and are open to whatever emerges. Sometimes a tune starts with a composed section and then evolves through improvisation, and at other times we jam on an idea, a rhythm, a poem or whatever, and the structure of the tune begins to form. Working together and trusting each other over many years allows for rich open-ended creativity."

“While our creative process has seamlessly endured, there are some ways the music itself has evolved,” Julie continues. “For instance when we started out we were writing mostly very short, tightly constructed pieces. Now our music is stretching out a bit, incorporating long forms and more improvisation, without sacrificing the blood and guts of our earlier work. We’re stretching out more, while maintaining the same level of intensity. . . and volume!”

Iconoclast: “Some of the tunes on Cobalt Confidential incorporate some different sensibilities,” Leo adds. "For instance, the title tune has classical elements -- with small clusters of repeated themes that are returned to throughout the piece, interspersed with asymmetrical at times atonal saxophone improvisations, set against a relentless tablaish drumset part that is physically, technically and mentally challenging. This tune perhaps sums up the history of ICONOCLAST, past and present -- all the elements converging in a new, surprising and fresh composition."

Is there evolution beyond this, or are we beyond the "sound barrier" and, beyond here, can there only be a fallback on known forms or pure noise? Is it enough for you, does it intrigue you, do these sounds challenge you, do they evoke the edges of a quivering and revolutionary New York, light years away from the current prosaic era of Amazon and fast food? At least it seems so to Cortez: when we made him listen to the album he told us that if he could complete that historic idea of ​​"Panthers Hugs" (of which below you can see the only existing archive image*), he would want Iconoclast as the soundtrack.

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