Cinema Romantics

Songs, lyrics, singing and instruments by Zero Solaris and Graf Tati
Readings: Miss Django, Cécile Dupaquier
Mix: Lucas Croon
Master: Emanuel Geller/ Salz Mastering
Cover: Cristina Coral
Design: Klotzt
Funded by Kulturamt der Stadt Köln
Funded by friends and fans via Crowdfunding

The album cover shows rows of cinema seats. A solitary, motionless female spectator sits in the third-to-last row, wearing a top in the same shade of beige as the seats. She is a human presence in the cinema, yet she belongs to the space like a piece of furniture—or like one of the hyper-realistic figures created by Pop Art artist Duane Hanson in the 1970s.
Spectators become part of the cinematic myth. They are temporarily delivered from their loneliness, while staged images and moments fill their minds with hope and longing.
That sense of longing is palpable from the very first shimmering notes on the album by the indie-pop band Cinema Romantics. The cinematic soundscape opens with a monologue by Zero Solaris about the night and Marilyn Monroe—set to a driving rhythm, organ, and surf guitar. Graf Tati recounts tales of the „Alphaville“ film club and hitchhiking in the 1970s, describing how a young man gets a ride from a French teacher in a white Peugeot 304 convertible. Which movie was that, again? The songs by Tati and Solaris evoke dreamlike film scenes. Vocals alternate with spoken-word passages, and the language shifts—much like switching from a dubbed version of a film to the original French or Italian audio. Cinema Romantics do not merely reference cinema in terms of style; they sing and speak quite specifically about the films and screen icons they love.

(Tina S. Hall/ press in disguise 2024)