With 16 tracks, this two album release (on one disc) offers a value-packed experience for Vargas aficiandos, unfolding close to an hour of fresh listening, with 11 new songs (music and lyrics) and 5 new instrumentals (‘sound collages’).

Classic cuts include the gown raising ‘CAN CAN HELL MAMBO’, where one get’s transported to a slinky death cabaret, surrounded by succubi cancaneuses, leading the mortal listeners into an delightful audiastic seduction under the veil of their stygian crinolines.

TORCHIN THE EL ROCCO,  conjures such a desolate perfection with it’s opening melancholy sax blows and sparse, ambient piano chords. VARGAS’ “labyrinth” reference in the title (sung as orroco) may, or may not, have significance to, or connection with the ‘minotaur’ myth, or ‘cult of the bull’, or perhaps even with the Surrealists/Black Dahlia conspiracy. In this scorchin’ torch, VARGAS asks for a fiery resurrection…A Christ complex blazes alongside a ‘Minoan’ horn section.

 BLACK HALO BLUES (Stripped version) is underplayed with some beautiful bluesy guitar-picking, balancing somewhere between light and darkness. Vargas references his mentor ‘Dr Anton LaVey’ as well as ‘Jesus’. …acknowledging himself in the toon as both “the Pimp” and “The Holy One”…flipping heads & tails…a burden in which he requires 2 faces with which to face opposite directions. He’s torn and stuck! Who is his master? In 1979, Lennon advised all to “Serve Yourself!”…but Vargas is still “7 steps to Satan” but only “6 steps to Jesus”.
By this smallest increment, he stands closer to the light, salvation and possible redemption…Shades of hypnotic Moroccan drone ring out Vargas’ struggle for Self.
I dig the neologism about ‘holiday hel-LA’!

TWILIGHT FIFTH & MAIN opens with cool backward recording, then a short drum-roll into a bright bluesy jazz combo…the chords scorch, spreading over snappy drums and an assertive righteous vocal by that low priest of Los Angeles’ skid row Jimmy Vargas.

ZOETICA BLUES, a paean to ‘the showgirls of floorshows past’ is a slow, sad, ‘wild’ crooning melancholy swingle…a sax solo riding beneath a narcotic veil of bittersweet guitar chords.

BLACK HALO BLUES (reprise). This, my favourite track on the album, is a powerful, forward-surging driven piece. With sensational, peerless drums and schwangin’ sax, it’s a super-charged standout piece…the lyrics seek an ideal to negate division. Vargas presents a kind of androgyny with this duelling dichotomic…involving opposites in complimentary union, as well as seeking wholeness from dualistic pairs where each opposite feels the other…a squawking obscene horn protrudes throughout reflecting the ‘Jeckyl n’ Hyde’ jam.

The BLACK HALO  album sits another rung higher on VARGAS’ ladder, and so can be regarded as his ‘bridging’ albums’ between the past four albums of the ‘SHADOW BRIDE’ years pointing to some place treacherous, haunted and redemption not reachable.
Damned nevertheless. This is a welcome addition to the Jimmy Vargas canon, BLACK HALO becomes stronger with each listen. With this new ‘sound set’, VARGAS presents some familiar scenes, themes, schemes and dreams, and also reveals new developments which become obvious with repeated plays. Truly to be an occult classic.

Pia Santaklaus © 2009

MAZING MYSTIFYING MYTHS with JIMMY VARGAS!
By Pia Santaklaus ©2008

From the first listen, VARGAS’ music and lyrics has an august feel.
These albums are infused with the ghosts of a specific universe full of strange operators, strong apparitions and even stranger themes…
 The material is so infused with cinematic aura it screams for an A-grade Hollywood style adaptation.
I can imagine it on film, on stage, animated, even a radio play.
I particularly imagine a Tim Burton-esque production (not unlike the 2005 ‘Corpse Bride’ franchise), or an adult PIXAR-style epic.
Either way, Jimmy Vargas’ own original songs would make an ideal soundtrack.

A quick scan of the song titles alerts the listener they’re in for a real curious journey. I imagine this material suitable for a mature audience, something akin to the biting American comic-book imprint VERTIGO with lines such as HELLBLAZER, THE SANDMAN, THE BOOKS OF MAGIC and THE DREAMING.
J.V balances elements of burlesque, horror, fantasy, romance, noir, mystery, sex and more.  

A scan of the CD liner notes reveals words, thoughts and themes not yet part of the mainstream conversation.
 It seems Vargas moves in different spheres.
His work is heat-charged, smoke-charged, sex-charged, death-charged, noir-charged and his vocabulary includes: 
‘Scarlatta’ - his muse and co-vocalist (Note: Scarlatta means ‘revealing’ in Italian)
‘Chiaroscuro’ (contrast between light and dark)
“Dark arts of Santeria” (Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean Magic religion).
“Ecdysia” (‘stripteasing’ from the Greek word ‘Ecdysis’ meaning to undress/molt).

SCARLATTA VEIL…Sinuous start…you get the feeling you’re being lured…drawn towards a hanging curtain in the misty darkness. Beyond the veil is a place of sin.
The veil itself, an anagram of evil.

TALLULAH’s BOUDOIR… A swinging jungle rhythm blends with sparse guitar sheen under sharp distant horns to declare a dedication for a flawed angel, as she performs an atomic chain dragging striptease.

THE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND…A definitive torch song. Legend has it that Vargas wrote and recorded a song of the same name back in 1947. Here, Jimmy re-creates and restores its lost potential.

HIGH HEELS BLACK STOCKINGS…  In this piece, VARGAS exalts his Lily / Dahlia’s signature dress traits; her narcotic essence is tied in with her “Higher higher heels

(COCKTAIL NOIR)…  A sparse spoken piece over fragile pretty piano. It offers room to absorb one’s thoughts and drift in and out with the smoke; it’s tinged with a minor sadness drifting towards the darker side of obsession.

 (DAHLIAS WEB)… Shimmering ringing guitar chords over a nervous palpitating, skipping heartbeat bass.

 (BLACK DAHLIA…DEATH SWINGS)…VARGAS implores / croons “…Who killed my Black Dahlia?…” in a phrasing that makes it ambiguous…is it a question or part of a statement?
The mystery is maintained.

SACRIFICIA EL MAYOMBE)…The stomping rhythm evokes the approach of a monster – a yelping, sawing sound interjects and is replaced by howling madness.
This piece is pure visualization – the sawing continues – it’s macabre. Frenzy – madness – screaming – the pitch rises to a white hot crescendo – then, instant nothing – but the fallen sound like hogs, rattling chains or bones and more nothing. (The title relates to ‘Palo Mayombe’, a Central African religion practiced mainly in Cuban communities from around the 1940s-1950s; using a sacred earth vessel and the spirit of a guiding ancestor).

Vargas’ introspective outpouring unfolds to tell more of his progressively tragic and legendary tale.
The dialogue both musically and lyrically have entered a new phase…a new realm.
It sounds as though Vargas himself has left the 1940s and inhabits a dream- a limbo – an unknown space.
Numerology plays a role on this set…Numbers 9, 3, 7, and 5 features prominently in the various song titles.

Here we find a very different set of albums to the previous 2.
If feels like Vargas has exhausted the old bars, the familiar streets and now, he escapes to more surreal, cinematic landscapes. Traditional instrumentation is employed again, but in creation of a more atmospheric plane where we find new original sounds of sadness, loss, fear, seeking.

ECDYSIA
Twilight tones from an artist of ecdysis (undress)...the Strip-teaser molts into something else

A STRIPPERS RHAPSODY…
VARGAS’ voice echoed by the ecstatic ‘bird’ calls swooning for him in the background
She is wrapped in mystery as the bold, righteous drums remove the layers of veils
It is a whimsical improvised piece of music “Capriccio”

BEAUTEVIL…
A soaked Beat-poet’s drunken paean to a sacred strip-teaser.

NUDE ON A SWING
A glorious, luxurious, dancefloor dramatics…one imagines tables of gathered astonished guests looking up to see Venus swinging above them like some sinful angel.

INVOCATION NUMBER THREE
A lush,vampiric organ with chilly choral accompaniment.
The bellows breathe life into a dying or dead soul.

 A ROSE TATTOO…
VARGAS in some lonely misty dream space, not lucid, hedged-in by threatening, looming thorns, knocking on mysterious doors that don’t open – knocking, tapping for someone to show him some way back – it’s a stunningly beautiful and reflective piece of music.
  
DIORISSIMO
 A door is opened.
Blush-strokes of sensual latino blow through. –
The dream IS real…
Strings blend beautifully with divine horns to create a sweeping dramatic tide of wafting devotion.
Diorissimo is the name of a modern Christian Dior perfume (‘Dior’ means ‘golden’) but VARGAS pronounces it “Dio Rissamo” which may translate as ‘God to Rise’.
(‘Dio’ means ‘God’, ‘Messiah’, ‘Jesus’ in Italian and ‘Rissimo’ means ‘To Rise’).
An amazing, beautiful number!

REQUIEM FOR A DEAD CROONER
A dark stringy organ speaks words and promises. Jimmy maintains a razor’s edge foothold.

MY SHADOW BRIDE
Windswept, dark, frightening, mysterious…the sax is a lone voice wailing at the cold universe, bemoaning the lost 4th dimension (the wasted time).

PHANTASMA (STALKING THE FIFTH AND MAIN)
A – creepy, haunted, morose, atmospheric - feel and follow the monstrous unknown.
‘The fifth’ may be a reference to the 5th dimension. In physics and maths, this abstract, hypothetical extra dimension represents a space consisting of all locations.

GHOSTING ON LOS ANGELES AVENUE
Here, Vargas’ aura provides an amazing juxtaposition as it feels like he is a kind of ‘Phantom Of The Opera’ being, displaced to the heart of the 1940s.
The after-world is transformed into a most romantic dreamscape!
As the song evolves, so does the obsessive focus of sadness.
In parts this track recalls a stripped back, slowed down, melancholic version of track a Stripper’s Rhapsody…themes seem to re-emerge where Vargas must resign himself to an impossible scenario and the sound of forever

© PIA SANTAKLAUS… 06 January 2008.

JIMMY VARGAS "CANCAN HELL MAMBO" DVD Review
ART LIGNE MAGAZINE

What kind of hell work is this ?

Is it a music video ?

An art house installation ?

A novel ?

A peep loop ?

Probably best described as a multi media presentation, CANCAN HELL MAMBO, JIMMY VARGAS' new opus is, though dealing with a retro subject of burlesque as it's theme, is a work of futuristic packaging.

CANCAN HELL MAMBO includes an art installation piece which would sit just as well in the hip galleries of La Luz de Jesus , a Spoken Word Performance, a Music E.P , the stunning Voto Gallery, two Music Videos and a downloadable E-Novella on which the works narrative thread is based.

To quote Vargas himself "The ipod generation want a multi functional product...I'm a multi-variety artist, so it's a perfect coupling."

As the title suggests, yes the work at first glimpse may appear to be about the delicious and naughty Cancan, but delve deeper under the inviting raised gown of Vargas' cancaneuse and you slowly suspect the delicious terror that their Cancan really weaves.

No Baz Luhrmann pop art is this.

Vargas' partner in crime, muse MADAME SIN who is the focal star icon of his piece, is seen to continually thrush her petticoats over the camera eye like a daemonic wasp queen, an ever present satanic hostess inveigling the viewer through the hadeian stations of VARGAS dark holistic work.

VARGAS recurring obsession of both hermetic or mystica-erotica as he calls it, is perfectly realized here in the visual aspects of the work.

Playing the role of both lucifer priest , Vargas, goads the viewer to submit to Miss Mortal's amazonian sexual precocity and then acts in the guise of the damned quarry gets entrapped by the tusanami wave of her " godess showgirl's underworld mysteria".

CANCAN HELL MAMBO could well be realized in years to come as a satanic video tract.

The old adage of the devil having all the good music is well supported here, with a soundtrack e.p. that is both jaunty, desolate and melancholic and bizarrely enough still plays as fifties adult orientated pop.

There is also a special section on the Dvd devoted to JIMMY VARGAS' burlesque showgirl Church called the TEMPLE OF GNOSTIC GLAMOUR, which features (but who else) the delectable platinum icon MADANE SIN in all her petticoat frenzied glory.

Created as a veneration piece, it is a stunning and moody pictorial of Vargas' muse, shot by him in an ever devotional forties fetish monochromatica.

ARTLIGNE Magazine...August 2008. Sam Lowy

CANCAN HELL MAMBO

(Video Running time..18 minutes / Music / Audio Running time...17 minutes . Foto Gallery / E-Book.)

JIMMY VARGAS "CANCAN HELL MAMBO" DVD Review

JIMMY VARGAS , the Bay Area's token vampire crooner's latest dvd, is a work that traverses both video, literature, tin pan alley songcraft zipped up to a 21st century zap

Its not a question of whether it's great or bad.

That's not really the point.

Vargas' work I'm told is more about aesthetic appeal than immediate commerciality

Still you won't find this in your local Borders.

I think the artist himself would most probably be appalled if it did.

For Jimmy Vargas' world, is an alternative universe where its still 40's americana.

Not the Norman Rockwell sort mind you.

Think Hopper with a diabolic frame.

Peopled with chilled blonde burlesque queens who are more liable to string you up on a cross and strip out your soul, with the louchein lucifer Vargas alternately leering and crooning on the vid track as they do so.

This is Hellzapoppin rendered in a dirty green vermeer.

The Vargas burlesque stage is in reality an executioners altar.

Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Can I say that again ?

Nasty.

Ooh that felt so good.

Though the tunes like Stripteasia Blues and Cancan Hell Mambo have a cocktail exotique wrapping, Vargas lyrical content confess a treacherous deceit to the slinky soundtrack that hides them. But there is humour. That is if your a honorary member of the Church of Satan.

I think this one might be a most requested add to hells jukebox of Anton La Vey while he barbecues up some fresh souls.

The only thing missing with this dvd is a complimentary holy water.

.JIMMY VARGAS...CANCAN HELL MAMBO..DVD / EP is out now on RESEARCH / ST.SYR

(C) Carmine Milano...2008

Occupying a complete unique area - at least in modern music terms - Jimmy Vargas and the Black Dahlias are a welcome schmoozefest of off-kilter conceptual jazz noir for the striptease cocktail lounge, produced with such love and authentic decadence that only a fool would fail to be entranced.

The Tease... the Torch and The Noir opens up with the magnificent Tallulah's Boudoir, a glorious paean to the glories of the 1940's burlesque club, and the album continues with its smooth soundtrack-style torch songs and finger-clicking jazz tunes, devoted to such sinful subjects as High Heels, Black Stockings, Strip Tease in Noir and House of Fetish. With Vargas adding just the right amount of discordia to his silky smooth vocals, matching the unsettlingly sexy music, the album goes down as smoothly as Sebor absinth and lingers in the mind just as seductively. There are moments which take me back to Twin Peaks' Red Room, while other tunes cry out for bumping, grinding burlesk tassel twirling.

My Shadow Bride continues with the theme of film noir exotica, conjuring up images of femme fatales, down-at-heel private dicks and semi-naked girls dancing in an illicit speakeasy while the band play the soundtrack to your last drink. Numbers like A Stripper's Rhapsody and Nude on a Swing threaten to spiral out of control as the burst with ideas, yet Vargas and his band bring it all under control impressively.

Admirers of jazz noir with a side helping of sleaze will need no further recommendation, Check 'em out!

(c) David Flint of Striporama/Lurid Films UK...2007

 Jimmy Vargas doesn't just put out CD's. He out to create a whole noir universe in word, music, and film. Death Swings is just part of the whole multi-media experience. The CD stands well enough on its own, but when you connect it to the rest of Vargas' world, that's when the magic truly happens. Some of the tunes from this album are featured in Vargas' short film My Shadow Bride in a Noir Veil. The music and the video images wrap themselves around together like wisps of cigarette smoke to construct a re-imagined American noir mythology centered around the mysterious murder of the beauty that has been come to be known as the Black Dahlia. It's an ambitious project, but Vargas pulls it off with style.

When you listen to this music, you are instantly transported to a misty, frantic, smoky dreamworld filled with hucksters and striptease temptresses. It walks the razor's edge between a burlesque stage paradise and a back alley gangland shoot-out. The vocals are both powerful and yet ethereal. It's a invisible serenade calling to you though a fog-covered veil. 

Death Swings itself is an album you need to sit down and listen to all the way through. Each track is fine on its own but it is just a small slice of this world this album creates. It's like watching a single scene out of "Double Indemnity" or "The Maltese Falcon." It's a peek through the keyhole. To really understand, you have to open the door to the shadowy room inside.

(C) Java Bachelor Pad Magazine, USA... 2005