Japan’s Calax Records keep us on tenterhooks with The Dead Mauriacs’ guess-again collage of noirish exotica styles after the label’s ace turns by Dutch sex educator Cora Emens, new beat/EBM oddity Dirk Desaever, and post-punk maverick Simon Fisher Turner

The Dead Mauriacs is a pseudonym for french artist Olivier Prieur, and ‘Paravents Et Miroirs, Une Cérémonie’ is his fantasy soundtrack homage to western exotica as imagined by Les Baxter, Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny. As the fourth Calax release, it also also the label’s first non-archival work, although it patently could have emerged in exotica’s ’50/’60s heyday, sharing a faithful palette of piano, Indian harmonium, violin, ukulele, didgeridoo, and myriad percussion tonalities that hark back to bygone sounds of luxury and mass tourism, albeit smudged and blurred to the high heavens. There’s something cinematic and knowing at play which sets the 40 minute work in the modern day, with a midi/computerised quality that echoes Guerrinha’s awesome ‘Cidade Grande’ LP of ’22, while also recalling far-out Sun Ra jaunts and GRM enigmas.

Titled with library record style descriptions of the music, ‘Paravents Et Miroirs, Une Cérémonie’ exerts its crepuscular charms under the long-shadow of post-colonialism. Olivier Prieur craftily plays with exotica’s connotations of an ersatz music for North American tourists who think they’re experiencing a real culture, imperceptibly vacillating instrumental and synthesised references to Indian music, Afro-Latin grooves, and big band pomp. In doing so he subtly echoes Throbbing Gristle’s fascinations with Martin Denny’s exotica, and its seductive depictions of fantasy, or the way ‘60s/‘70s Italian film conjured a whole sonic language of their own to suit their pseudo-westerns. Trust it’s all handled dead smoothly, but not without surprises, ideal for lowlit late night listening.