lark i

a long time ago, before i was a blog, i was a little sleepless thought in the night. lark was one of the first bands i fiddled with...

written March2006
@midnight in Liliwhite
Tamboerskloof

She is light. and dark.
He is light. and heavy.
They are lark.

Divine delinquency might begin to describe the cutting edge musical collaboration that is Paul and Inge. Nothing will illustrate the duo’s unique sound, one that I am indelibly proud to have emerging from Cape Town.

The first time I heard them - an unsuspecting and dazed trawler at the Long Street Festival - I stood riveted. My ears were educated. In retrospect, associations like Björkesque Goth, gypsy Electronica and dark, circus fusion rose to the surface of my mind and settled in a swill of inferior adjectives. Words fail against Lark’s twisty, testy vine of sound. Descriptions are lost in translation. Apt words are possibly those they created themselves; Lark tongue licks your ears and tickles your (temporal) lobes with ingenious incomprehension.

Inge’s masterful and edgy harmonies smack conventional melody structures upside the lunar tides of Paul’s dark and sexy beats without selling out to melancholy. She glides between vivid, challenging emotions and murmuring ebbs with the sharpness and ease of a burning blade through ice. Her suave, unscripted adaptability reminds me of another musical chameleon on the scene who seems to have gone from suspenders to soap operas, somehow. (could Inge be chris in drag? Has it all gone pop?…) Paul throws crisp, intelligent digital pinches into the flawless mix, and belies it all with a bonedeep, bloodthick bass that is his trademark and towline.

Creativity takes no prisoners; we are all its victims. Lark is making its trademark on our musical souls!