Imagine if Ennio Morricone was just starting out today and got the call from Sergio Leonne to write a suitable score for a spaghetti western movie he was shooting. I like to think that “Poison” is the sort of thing he might have come up with. With so many more sounds and styles to call on, with genres a thing of the past, with so many more influences and inspirations to mix and match, a more eclectic sound would surely have been the result. Okay, I’ll admit that some of the song’s more onanistic references might not have made the final edit, but apart from that, “Poison” is Perro Del Kaos giving us an alternative sonic timeline for such a cinematic score.
A post-punk, electronica-infused, garage-blues, spaghetti western soundtrack, a strange blend of analog instrumentation and digital deftness, something that links those old emotive sounds of the past with an apocalyptic sonic vision of the future? Yes, it’s that, and so much more.
Below all of those apocalyptic urges and retro references, the song is actually a personal diary, an intimate ode to “friendship in a time of turmoil and political polarization”. But, like all good music, you can interpret it how you want and take from it what you wish. As the guitars slash and grind, as more understated electronica creates lulls and lows, as sonics squall and squeal, as Perro Del Kaos draws us in with his lyrical narrative and poetic vocal pictures, it also feels like the soundtrack to a world teetering on the brink of something. But on the brink of what? Well, you may well ask.
