Somewhere in the Windy City, a daring duo have apparently decided that the ideal soundtrack for eternal damnation should involve a drum machine, a considerable amount of sexual frustration, and the sort of theatrical excess that would make Dracula consider hiring a new stylist. X & Stacy, the body beat duo of Yasmine Esparza (X) and Jason Schmal (Stacy), have returned with their second single, Sangre Eterna, indulging their appetite for industrial electronics, Italo Disco, and European club music.
The proceedings begin with a funereal chime, that ancient announcement that somebody has either died or is about to make a spectacularly poor romantic decision. Eerie Spanish-language vocals drift into the arrangement, establishing an atmosphere of supernatural unease before a gloriously indecent backbeat barges into the funeral procession and starts rearranging the furniture. Suddenly, the cemetery has acquired a dance floor, and the mourners are behaving in ways that would get them excommunicated from most respectable religious institutions.
X & Stacy’s influences encompass the synthetic romanticism of Depeche Mode and Red Flag, the mechanical brutality of SPK, and the Latin pop sensibilities of Selena, an unlikely family gathering whose members would probably spend Christmas arguing over the thermostat. The song’s melodic sensibility also recalls the sleek synthpop of Cetu Javu, lending a seductive elegance to this peculiar congregation. Yet Sangre Eterna finds these ingredients getting along rather splendidly.
Minor-key synths conjure a mood of exquisite depravity as the rhythm section strides on with the resolve of a particularly horny undertaker. Through the electronics, a chamber-goth shimmer emerges: resonant, string-like tones that evoke hammered dulcimer or sitar. The passage summons the mystical grandeur of Dead Can Dance, lending the song an arcane, ritualistic air—as if the dance floor had been consecrated for a beautifully illicit ceremony.
The Spanish vocals are punctuated by gasps and moans that push the proceedings toward something deliciously absurd, suggesting an intimate encounter conducted in the basement of an abandoned nightclub. Then comes a screeching guitar passage that recalls the more unhinged experiments of Bauhaus, tearing across the electronic arrangement with the abrasive theatricality of Daniel Ash attacking a particularly troublesome piece of furniture. The collision of gothic rock and New Beat works beautifully, introducing a welcome dose of instrumental violence into an already wonderfully disordered affair.
One imagines this playing during a vampire film in which the bloodsuckers abandon their aristocratic obligations, raid a discount clothing store for leather trousers, and spend eternity getting thrown out of nightclubs. Frankly, immortality has seldom sounded quite so entertaining.
Listen to Sangre Eterna below and order the single here.
Having shared stages with Madeline Goldstein, Normal Bias, Choke Chain, and others, X & Stacy clearly know their way around the darker corners of contemporary club culture. Sangre Eterna suggests they’ve also developed a healthy appreciation for the pleasures of making drum machines behave badly.
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