Romantic Times

Just to counteract the 2-star review of this bizarre, unknown experimental musical mysterious "genius" of sorts from the 1980's (and probably from another physical world entirely), I'll include the fine description as posted from the record company that reissued his (previously) lost music...after reading it, how could you not fall in love with the stuff ???:::::::Earlier this year, we released the mysterious, bewitching L’Amour, a 1983 private press record thought to be the only release by one of music’s true lost talents: Lewis.So lost, in fact, was Lewis, he eluded every effort to track him down. Scant details were known: just a series of possibly apocryphal stories about a sports car-driving Canadian with a model on his arm and a habit of skipping town when there were bills to be paid.Deciding that Lewis’ spider web-delicate songs demanded to be heard, we put the album out anyway, offering to present the due royalties to anyone who could prove they were Lewis.One sure thing was this: Lewis was a man of many names: Randall A. Wulff among them. Now we have either found another alias – or perhaps even his real name – on the sleeve of a completely unknown album.Sourced soon after the re-release of L’Amour, Romantic Times is the 1985 follow-up to L’Amour – and it’s released as Lewis Baloue. The name may be slightly different, but this is absolutely our man: a familiar blond posing on the sleeve, a familiar, tortured voice pouring his heart out over languid synths and synthetic waltz beats.Remastered from a sealed, vinyl copy of the ultra-rare album, the album was discovered in the vaults of DJ and collector Kevin “Sipreano” Howes in Vancouver, BC. It’s so rare that what is, at present, the only other known copy – found in the same Calgary store where Aaron Levin discovered a batch of sealed copies of L’Amour – is presently soaring into quadruple digits on eBay.Even engineer Dan Lowe, credited for working on the album at Calgary’s Thunder Road Studios, remembered little about the session other than that Lewis seemed to be “under the influence”. Yet the music is utterly captivating.The album further fleshes out the Lewis myth – we see him pictured in that white suit with his famous white Mercedes and a private jet too; we hear him focussing more intently on matters of the heart, and appearing to unravel in the process. “I felt like I was witnessing a full-blown exorcism of a phantom clad in the finest linen,” writes filmmaker and historian Jack D. Fleischer in his brand new liner notes. “This record went further [than L’Amour ]. It was a personal plea, of sorts. Something had gone wrong. Nerves were clearly exposed.”It paints Lewis, then, as being more like a David Lynch character than even his debut did, exposing the darkness beneath the sheen. The album is presently being readied for release to the throng of new fans Lewis has found, willingly or not. The man himself remains a total enigma

Superior to L'Amour, Romantic Times delivers on its title, with a world of dreamy opulence and haunted seduction - no more so than on epic centerpiece So Be In Love With Me. There is one mood through every song on this album - slow, sleepy, sleazy, sedated. Lewis makes music almost as if he has never heard other music - except the song Strangers In The Night. He incorporates its melody into opening track We Danced All Night, another high point. If this had been released by 4AD in 1985, it might be better remembered now. Plainly before its time. Play this alongside It'll End In Tears or Sleeps With The Fishes. Come die with Lewis.

Words to songs are incomprehensible

This played on an accidental loop all night last night in my bedroom. My wife asked what it was and wanted to listen to it all night again. It's weird and I don't quite know how to describe it, but it's soothing and the back story makes it even better.

Reminds me of Angelo Badalamenti's music for Twin Peaks. Creepy and saccharine simultaneously, an unsettling environment. Really good record.