Album Review: Venus Fly Trapp, "Grotesque"


As long as humanity continues to reproduce by the M+F=C formula (Male + Female = Children), transvestites, transsexuals, and the other various gender benders who hide in the night are going to be routinely reviled as vile, disgusting creatures. Following the release of 'her' first CD Shakunetsu last year, pre-op transsexual VENUS FLY TRAPP returns with a more solid album designed to "challenge negative ideas" about those caught in the no-mans land of gender.

Grotesque ironically attempts to be an album of great beauty with serene aural textures and intriguing rhythms. While Shakunetsu, with its more song-oriented format, exposed VFT’s rather fragile voice, Grotesque keeps things fluid and mysterious. This agenda is set out in the first track "Naked Sundance" with its bubbling jungle rhythms and animal sounds, while "Yozakura Hara Hara," in true World Cup spirit, plays with stirring Irish and Indian rhythms before throwing in the lovely accent of a Chinese lute!

As with the world from which 'she' comes, disorientation, confusion, and furtive blending seems to be the surreptitious subtext.

Colin Liddell
Tokyo Journal
July 2002

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