Mean Streets So Cal, March 1998, Volume VIII – Issue 9

PROJEKT FESTIVAL: One of the most dramatic and beautiful nights of music awaits you…

By Ned Raggett

About 2000 years ago. plus a few, the Ides of March proved to not be a pretty good day. At least for a balding fellow named Julius Caesar. However, that was Rome and two millennia away, not Los Angeles and the middle of this March.

At the El Rey Theatre on Sunday, March 15, the third Projekt Festival will be hosted for many an appreciative fan, likely providing one of the most dramatic and beautiful nights of music for years. Organized by Projekt main man Sam Rosenthal, the festival, previously held in the in the label’s headquarter city of Chicago, will feature two of Projekt’s flagship bands— Los Angeles’ own Love Spirals Downwards and Rosenthal’s group Black Tape for a Blue Girl — and Santa Barbara’s faith and the Muse (who though not on Projekt are closely associated with the label via Darkwave distribution). Tickets can currentIy be purchased via Los Angeles at Retail Slut on Melrose, in Orange County at Ipso Facto in Fullerton, and through Projekt at 1-800 CD-LASER. All very well, you say, but why should you care?

Simply put, quality, combined with a driving desire to steer away from an easy and obvious norm. Projekt has evolved throughout the 90s as the closest possible equivalent to the 80s glory days of England’s 4AD label — a record business dedicated not to the commercial quick kill but to an overall aesthetic of lush beauty in appearance and sound, shaded throughout with the dark emotional touches too easily summed up and dismissed as “goth.” While it’s no secret that Projekt and associated bands have been far too often seen as a goth label — Rosenthal has jokingly referred to himself as a crazy uncle of goth — in response to such charges in the past, while Faith and the Muse’s William Faith wears white make-up and haystacked black hair like a pro — the three bands featured each have their own specific style and much to offer to the open-minded listener willing to put aside clichéd descriptions in favor of the actual music itself.