Vincent & Mr. Green

Eastern-bloc smoke-filled cabarets come to mind. A female voice-macabre blends with beats concocted in a carnival of postmodern cinematic themes and truly dirty hip-hop. Marlene Dietrich and Wu-Tang Clan. An ugly beauty.The compositions of their previous incarnation entitled Jade Vincent Experiment (heard on the 1998 album Moy) has given way to an electronic driven engine and has birthed a musique-noir hybrid of itself, Vincent and Mr. Green. Their style remains experimental and unconventional. In an instance the sounds of old Country music mingle with a different kind of hip-hop and then through the door into the ballroom where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers step lightly. Lyrically the songs are about life and death. Love and hate. The music tends to shed some light and then keep you in the dark all at once. A struggle between the ego and the id. Somehow accidentally conceptual, the songs mean to treat the listener to a film of comedic style or drama; or maybe a stroll through the Louvre where every painting is a story in itself, varying to hard degrees of emotion, both good and evil, funny and sombre, surreal or real.You could listen to this record with the two of them. Driving eerily slow but somehow still careening down Mulholland drive, Vincent at the wheel of a drop-top DB5, holding her ‘Faye’ lipstick-smudged mug, sipping hot cocoa through the curves. Mr. Green behind you, his ladykiller eyes burning a hole in the back of your head. And your nervous, on edge a little bit, because you can’t shake the vision in your mind’s eye of what would happen if Vincent’s long black hair were to get tangled up in a wheel.