Revolver Modele

Revolver Modele – “Discotheque Crypt”
By Marcus Pan
Dark and simple – the model for the four-man one-woman gothic rockers Revolver Modele is crisp and clean, harkening back to the 80s heyday of dark-clad goth bands vying for attention and fruition through the Peel Program. The simple songs are washed in a sepia toned timelessness, trying to take us back twenty years yet its official release date is not even here yet (February 21, 2006) for Stateside stores.

The thrill that was a slowly played Bauhausian ballad is alive and well in the company of Natasha Hassett (bass), Jesse Winsell (drums), Ehsan Alam (vocals/guitar) and Mikal Arnold (lead guitar). They don’t even bother to dress overly gaffick, secure and serene within the fact that their music is, nonetheless, as dark and brooding an aesthetic as the scene ever needed and wanted. If you’re a DJ in a goth-rock room that spins Bauhaus, JD and Uncle Andy, then you should have by now added Revolver Modele tracks to your playlist from their past two EP releases, Revolver (2003) and Revolver Modele (2004).

Their first full length, Discotheque Crypt, is ageless in its sound, defying critics like me to pan it as “already done” and instead believing that it’s been found in a time capsule buried for twenty years near the grave of Ian Curtis and only just found – not just recorded. Ah Ah Ah is as chunkily angst-ridden old school goth as when Siouxsie first shrieked. Lightly muddied guitars with a tad of shriek woven over top of a solid, simple and moving bassline and percussion, it’ll move any old school crowd wherever on the planet you take it. Delirium Tremens picks up the pace slightly, keeping the same format with grittier basswork and much faster pace.

With Icons reaching us midway through Discotheque Crypt, the guitar-bass-drum-baritone style remains, but gets even more gutsy and muddied, becoming as much a dirge as a song. I Really dig Masks with its interesting percussion rhythm and punchy bass that sounds on the one hand poppy but is beaten into a gloomy submission by Ehsan’s vocals. Body Without Organs has great basswork within by Natasha, clean and clear. We leave Discotheque Crypt with the dark lock-step ballad of In the Aisles with its deep vocals and heavy handed bass. The rhythm guitar that links up the bass and higher guitar at times is well played and gives the track a cohesive feeling.

I’ve heard a lot of goth rock in my day. Probably more than many, being a critic and all. And when I say a lot, I mean more CDs have crossed my desk in the stringent “goth rock” genre than most people have entire collections of “everything.” But I dig Revolver Modele aplenty. I’d use the term throwback if not for the fact that the word sometimes denotes a negative connotation, and I don’t mean it as such. We can’t go see Ian Curtis perform anymore, and most of the others have gone by the wayside as well. But we can go see Revolver Modele perform and remember what it must have been like seeing an original, genre-defining dark rock outfit hit the stage to create a new movement of sound and subculture.

http://www.legendsmagazine.net/157/revolver.htm - Legends Magazine

Revolver Modele - Discotheque Crypt CD 2006
That perfect 80's GOTHIC ROCK sound from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sounding like a perfect cross between Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and early The Cure. Music is filled with a lot of energy and character. From looking at the CD cover and title it would appear to be some generic dark dance music but they're all real: Bass, Drums, Guitar, Vocals. Great amazing music, like a lost 80's Goth band. CD Tracks: Les Diaboliques / Ah Ah Ah / Delirium Tremens / High Heels / Icons / Masks / The Ache / Body Without Organs / Fiction / Deca-dance / In The Aisles. CD has a bonus video of "Les Diaboliques" . Go to their site and listen to Ah Ah Ah and you'll know you've found your next favorite band.
Reviewed by: Spidey
http://www.darkgrave.com/reviews.php - Dark Grave

Discoteque Crypt – Review
I was introduced to this band recently and listened to a few samples of their music. As an avid fan of the early goth and post-punk music of Joy Division, Siouxsie, The Cure and Bauhaus I was immediately intrigued by what I heard and managed to grab their debut full-length album Discoteque Crypt. The disc contains eleven outstanding tracks and an additional bonus video of "Les Diaboliques". The nice thing is that right on the promo label of the disc are the words "clean for radio", which for me is a huge plus as we constantly fight the barrage of vulgar language in our musical genres to add fodder to misunderstood stereotypes.

Kicking off this album is "Les Diaboliques" which is what I would call the obvious single from the album with the most pop-oriented and most accessible track on the album to cross genre boundaries, but also what I found to most resemble work from Joy Division. The deep angst-ridden vocals are definitely a solid staple to the band's sound along with those scratching guitars and solid bassline. The album only deviates slightly from this pattern of quick-paced, simple percussion, grooving, heavy and solid bassline, grinding guitars which while they're standard for this genre and a key element, at times become a little scratchy that limit when you might listen to the music (concentration proves hard when this is playing as background music), and finally the deep, moody vocals. Even with this homogenous sound, it's possible to pick out tracks that are a little more catchy than others such as the moving "Ah Ah Ah", the aforementioned "Les Diaboliques" and the driving piece "High Heels" with nice hoooks and poetic grace.

The punk-oriented and scratchy guitars on "Delirium Tremens" can grind on the nerves, but still becomes an overall fun, spasmatic piece. Many other tracks come under this driving style like "Icons" and "Body Without Organs". In fact "The Ache" is about the only piece that really throttles the tempo back to a mid-tempo piece with hypnotic lyrical lines that will have the listener singing along even on the first listen. The album moves along quickly wrapping up with two excellent tracks that old-school fans can appreciate in "Deca-dance" and the finale to the album is "In the Aisles" being something that possibly only Ian Curtis could have done better.

With that the album is done and the listener is left spent from another great album from another talented group, while building on a tried and true sound of past legends, manages to pull it off in a way that should provide something new for fans to sink their fangs into.

Rating: 4/5
http://www.gothicparadise.com/revolver_modele.htm - Gothic Paradise

Revolver Modèle, Discothéque Crypt: Ehsan Alam’s sepulchrally booming voice and the firmly 1980s goth/alt-rock ethos that inspires Revolver Modèle lead to inevitable comparisons with Joy Division and Bauhaus—but it would be a mistake to think that Discothéque Crypt is merely derivative of its forefathers any more than Franz Ferdinand and Interpol are. The darkly electric dance-rock would have struck a chord with the black-clad clubbers of 1985, but Crypt doesn’t pander to graying goth nostalgia so much as it simply jumps into the music like the intervening years never happened.

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/43662 - Onion

Revolver Modèle
Discothèque Crypt
Estate Sale Records

Let's clear the air right now: G-O-T-H. Sure, Revolver Modèle's crepuscular flame is too streamlined to allow for conventional pigeonholing; nothing about the band bears the slightest trace of fetish club or Renfest affiliations. The band passes on contemporary genre frippery, instead looking to the foreshadowing likes of Bauhaus, the Birthday Party, Banshees, and one or two Peter Hook-related projects for inspiration--along with (night)life itself. "Your legs are wrapped around my ribs/Can you feel my heartbeat?" vocalist and guitarist Ehsan Alam croons on "The Ache," his gloriously spooked baritone growing ever more insistent as it orbits bassist Natasha Hasset's fluid hub. As usual, drummer Jesse Winsell plays the straight man, while guitarist Mykel Arnold's measured interjections lend muscle to Alam's probe before resolving the track in a sustained torrent of speed-picked sparks. Slower than much of the consistently frisky Discothèque Crypt, the mid-tempo loper offers an easy peek into a realm where untrammeled sensuality reigns in lieu of mundane poo. A little time, a little money, and the band might well end up becoming rock's David Lynch. --Rod Smith

- City Pages

Reviewed by David de Young

Revolver's first First Avenue Main Room show was most definitely a success.
The transition to the Main Room stage from the likes of the Uptown's, the Turf Club's or the 400 Bar's can be a trick for some bands. Although Revolver didn't quite look like they were born there, they definitely looked like they'd started moving in, and undoutedly held their own there for the duration of their 45-minute set on Tuesday.
As the First Avenue screen/curtain rose to the first strains of Michael Arnold's guitar on the song "Silhouettes" (featured on their debut EP) Revolver took over the main room like a moody, sonic storm. As evidence of their growing popularity nearly 200 people had made the effort to show up early enough on a bill headlined by New York's The Rapture to see the band who had just been named "Best New Band" of 2003 by the City Pages.
With the help of First Avenue's sound system, Ehsan Alam' voice finally equaled in actual sonic magnitude the hugeness it takes on in my own mind when I listen to Revolver recordings or when I've heard them at smaller venues. From the first few words he sang it was clear that he and the band were more than ready for this. (And so were we, as most of us moved up as close as possible to the stage to show our support: fans, friends, and more.)

As the show wore on, we were treated to many of the same stage showmanship that makes Revolver such a thrill to watch at the many other venues where I've seen them. Mike Arnold climbed on his amp, or anything he could get up on. Alam shook his ass like Elvis on speed metal on some songs. He clutched the monitors on others as if he were drowning in the water off a rocky beach and they were the only things to hold onto to keep him from being swept out into the ocean. (Although one thing I wish he'd done was to claim more of the width of the stage physically by moving around more, especially to stage right where the Nun (Natasha Hasset) was holding her own on the bass with fashionable, stoic, steadfastness.

Arnold did most of the talking between songs throughout the night. At one point, during an extended break between the 5th and 6th songs, he let us in on a secret that it was once his ambition just to play the neighboring 7th St. Entry so you could imagine the treat this was. (This was something I'd somehow guessed, but I'm glad he shared this.) That extended break was forgivable as the sixth song was an incredibly powerful rendition of "Shake Me Gently, I'm Still Breathing" (also from the debut EP.) I don't think I've ever heard this song performed quite this way before or caught the beauty of the lyric "it's the part of the show that if you cry maybe I will wipe your eyes." Not intentionally funny, I'm sure, but it struck me as such as Arnold lit a cigarette and sucked on a Heineken in silhouette at one point while Alam sang the lyric was "it's part of the show."
The direction that Revolver is taking as they evolve both excites and scares me. But it scares me in a good way, even though while watching them Tuesday my Joy Division flashbacks were more recurrent than usual. If you've ever listened to any of the live concerts Joy Division left behind (or are old enough to have actually seen them, they more frequently than not sucked live, something Revolver, fully do not.
- www.howwastheshow.com

December 2004 issue

http://www.janemag.com/2001/0904cd_results/reader_cd.html

Revolver Modele is #9 - Jane Magazine

Revolver Modele
by Dana Madden
Question: take a guy who learned to dance listening to Duran Duran, an actual dancer, a lead guitarist with primate-like climbing abilities, and a former English major who pounds out his love on the drums, and what do you have? Answer: Revolver Modele. Before there was Relvolver Modele, however, there was Pap’s Fedora. The goofy-named musical endeavor of high school buddies Mykal Arnold (guitar) and Jesse Winsell (drums) who titled their nascent group after their shop teacher’s funny hat. The group jelled when college roommate Ehsan Alam (vocals/guitar) and friend Natasha Hassett (bass) joined on, necessitating a name change to the much cooler band moniker of Revolver in 2001. The name wouldn’t last for long though; it was changed yet again for the release of the group’s debut EP this past spring, to avoid possible litigation from bands with the same name. During the turmoil of searching, Arnold happened upon a Web site called Revolver Modele, and the band at last found a permanent name. Revolver Modele“We didn’t name the group that because of any special fascination with revolvers or anything,” claimed Alam while being interviewed after one of the band’s recent local gigs. “I mean, I’m afraid to even hold a kitchen knife.” The name-inspiring Web site displays nineteenth-century collectors guns and actually provides a nice point of reference for the band’s sound—a destructive/elegant hybrid in the same aesthetic spirit as classic firearms. “I like the idea of weapons as art,” explained Winsell. “The idea of beauty and power put together.”It’s this precise combination of beauty and power that Revolver Modele masters in their performance. The large voice of Ehsan Alam immediately renders audience members baffled yet entranced, confused at the sight of such powerful sound coming from so slight a figure.As song titles like “Barbed wire and chloroform” and “Shake me gently, I’m still breathing” indicate, Revolver Modele’s sound is sometimes somberly maudlin, though just as often propelled by high-energy rhythms.When things really get moving. From convulsing on the stage floor to hugging the microphone in pain, Revolver Modele are no strangers to showmanship.Revolver Modele’s energy onstage enagages the audience in a myriad of ways. While Alam’s dark voice sooths listeners, it sets the stage for his colorful dancing. Flailing his arms and occasionally turning around to shake his rear, Alam puts on an unquestionably earnest show of jubilance throughout nearly the entirety of any given Revolver Modele gig.Alam isn’t alone in his antics. At some point Arnold is usually hanging from the rafters engaging in his Tarzan routine, somehow managing to simultaneously play guitar, while Alam kicks and jiggles fervently below him. The rythtm section is more stable, with professional dancer Hassett typically calmly swaying to the beat and drummer Jesse sweating and pounding in the background. Alam and Arnold’s onstage acrobatics are so extreme that Alam, while sitting down to the interview absentmindedly asks Arnold if he’s bleeding. Arnold shrugs, unfazed by the everyday possibility of being injured while playing.Though in a state of frenzy onstage, Alam writes songs in the opposite condition, calm and alone. “I write about things that I read, observe, all that surrounds me,” claimed Alam, before flippantly adding, “and The Simpsons.” Consistent with the dark and velvety undertones to the songs is the method by which the songs are named. When Alam finds it difficult to identify the central theme for a song, he hums the bass-line and forms the name with words that sound like his humming.Because of their extreme sound and high level of electric energy, Revolver Modele is often compared with ’80s-era music, especially Joy Division and The Smiths. Alam claims that the band, while influenced by many, including Morrissey, has their own style, “I don’t mind comparisons as a way for listeners who haven’t heard us to better understand our music, but I think each of our songs has its own original feel.” “Our sound now is a lot more consistent,” claims Hassett, reflecting on Revolver’s progress. “In the beginning we just made a lot of noise.” With this established identity, Revolver plans to release a full-length album in spring of 2004, tentatively in April. Plenty of recently won fans will be waiting ... - Pulse Of The Twin Cities

Revolver Modele @ The Turf Club
One of the Twin Cities most highly touted new groups, Revolver Modele are celebrating the release of their second self-titled EP. Four studio cuts of 80s darkness (with big U2 styled riffage settling in nicely alongside singer Ehsan Alam’s low pitched goth-boy crooning) with one live song thrown in for kick’s (“Artefact” from the band’s set at the Triple Rock on 9/5 of last year). This release is sure to semi-sate the appetites of RM’s already substantial Twin Cities following, but come on y’all when’s the full-length going to happen? With The Idle Hands and Thunder In The Valley. 9 p.m. $5. 21+. The Corner of University & Snelling Avenues, St. Paul. 651-647-0486. (Nathan Dean)
- Pulse OF The Twin Cities

HEAR NOW: Revolver Modele

BY MOLLY PRIESMEYER
Special to the Pioneer Press

Personnel: Ehsan Alam, vocals; Mykal Arnold, guitar; Natasha Hassett, bass; Jesse Winsell, drums.

Background: Arnold and Winsell have known each other since birth, but it wasn't until after Arnold returned to Minneapolis in 2001, after studying international economics and winemaking in Spain, that sheer boredom inspired the two to form a band. Arnold called on former University of Minnesota dormmate Alam to add the vocal punch, his pal Hassett filled in on bass, and the foursome's ennui turned into loads of accolades and endless nights in the newly revived Twin Cities rock scene.

Concept: Though frontman Alam summons the self-destructive demons of rock's gothic past, the Anglophilic Revolver Modele creates a palpable optimism with its sweat-soaked, post-punk dance-party grooves. "We wanted to play around with some music that wasn't being explored currently. Sort of blend dance-y rhythms and sexy music with gloomy, darker lyrics ranging from unrequited love to suicide," Arnold says. Revolver Modele has attracted a rapidly growing fan base, and Arnold's hoping the band will achieve more than a flash in the pan. "There's a lot of bands on independent labels that produce good albums year after year, and there's no critical acclaim and no big attention showered on them, but they're always putting out quality stuff," he says. "That's what we want to do."

Recordings: Revolver Modele's self-titled three-song EP (released in spring 2003 when the band was only Revolver), was produced by Jaques Wait, who has worked with such much-lauded local acts as the Soviettes and the Bleeding Hickeys. Working with Wait again, Revolver Modele plans to release another EP this spring as part of a series. "We're toying around with the idea of putting out four EPs locally, putting one out more frequently, kind of keeping things fresh," Arnold says. "It works out for us to put more attention into fewer songs. And I think the typical listener nowadays has a shorter attention span. So it works out both ways, I think."

Review: The Minneapolis foursome admittedly cribs from some of England's best: Joy Division, the Smiths, New Order. But Revolver Modele writes all the footnotes, creating its own brand of new-wave macabre. "Ehsan stays up till, like, 6 in the morning reading," says Arnold. "He reads stuff like Schopenhauer. I don't sleep for days sometimes, and that's when I tend to write my best stuff." Alam sings of buildings that bleed, tears wiped away with open wounds and bodies that have lost their ability to function, while the rest of the depressed shake and gyrate and join in the black celebration.

Gig: Revolver Modele will play the Best New Bands of 2003 Showcase, 7 p.m. Wednesday (21-plus), First Avenue, 701 First Ave. N., Mpls. , $7-$5, 612-332-1775.
- St. Paul Pioneer Press