BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY THINGS

"This album is the album I've been wanting- to make for the last four years," says Marc Bianchi, sounding resonantly relieved and content. His latest, Manic Expressive (Tiger Style), is an absolute, stop-dead-in-your-dirt stunner and he's beaming like a new dad. For somebody who, in the past, has been pegged as self-indulgent, Bianchi is downright jovial.

"We [Bianchi and longtime partner/collaborator, the uni-named Keely] got to go to Europe a couple of times, and it opened up my eyes to something as simple as the human experience of living... the beauty in everyday things." He explains, before adding," This record seems to be a collaboration between my little world and the rest of the world out there."

Manic Expressive opens with the title track, a lamenting string quartet (pre-programmed, thank you) vast and deep in sadness that manages to conjure up the same cold loss as Joy Division's "Atmosphere." ("I saturated myself in a lot of classical music just to get a feeling of how it works... a lot of Debussy, some Stravinsky," Bianchi confesses.)

But despite the ominous into, the rest of the record is a fab foray into pure kaleido-tronic; the Air-breathing "Key Stroke"; the full-blown Carnaby Street '66 psych of "Hassle Free Harmony." "Lydia" is pieced together with hooks and strings and a hundred happy, shiny samples over which Bianchi and Keely's Siamese voices trace each other's delicate steps on that fine line separating love and madness.

When not working on the next HSH project ("I just record fanatically. I don't know why!"), Bianchi has a night gig as a remixer, recently taking a scalpel to Elastica's cover of Trio's "Da Da Da." So what is the allure of remixing?

"It is, by far, my favorite medium of doing things. It's a chance to collaborate without having the dueling egos or dueling ideas because you're just taking a piece of work that's already done and adding what you see fit. The other aspect is that I'm really insecure vocally. I don't like the way OI sing. I always think it's one of our weaker points, so it's a chance to have freedom to work with singers that really have this gift for delivering certain emotions instead of this one monotone."

Her Space Holiday. You should take one, too. You look tired.

DENNIS YUDT

Mush Records