Today’s greatest music enigma: Lewis and L’Amour

[dropcap style= boxed]W[/dropcap]e all love a good mystery, don’t we? And music is full of them. Sadly, most are bloated falsifications that have risen from the hare-brained notions of deluded fans. From Robert Johnson selling his soul, to Kurt Cobain’s ‘mysterious’ death, we have heard them all from every corner of the blogosphere. Once every while however, something truly puzzling materializes; something beyond rational thought. Lewis, whoever he is, is one of these.Take a glance at the photograph: Immaculate blonde hair; perfectly tailored white suit; finely cut Cuban cigar in hand. In the background is the gleaming white Mercedes in which he left the recording studio and the private jet on which he is about to embark into the abyss.  A playboy of his age and the mystery of ours.

As his jet took to the sky, the cheques he flaunted across Los Angeles that day bounced.

Sometime in 1983, a man under the alias of Lewis strolled into a local Los Angeles punk-rock recording studio with a lady who claimed to be a swimwear model in hand. Under the influence of “some sort of drug,” the atmosphere he placed on the record was bizarre, soothing in the most offensive way, a medicine for the most aching hangover. L’Amour’s tortured, but delicate voice plays host to cryptic lyrics as ethereal synths hum and guitars gently pluck in a percussion-less, opaque sonic haze.Like its creator, L’Amour was instantly forgotten. As his jet took to the sky, the cheques he flaunted across Los Angeles that day bounced, leaving the handful of test press copies made lying in the secret vaults of the most diehard vinyl collectors.Then in March this year, a small time record collector purchased the record at an Albertan flea market. Intrigued, he posted it on the internet to speculate its origin. Soon the mystery of the record became so great that a small-scale record label, Light in the Attic, decided to print the album for the first time in its thirty-year history.The critical response was feverous; Pitchfork awarded the record an almost perfect score, as did Mojo and Line of Best Fit. Overnight, the man who claimed that his “house had sunken into the sea” became the most discussed musician on earth.Despite the label’s promise to hand all royalties over to the artist responsible, every trace of Lewis has long disappeared. Some argue that the album’s original label, R.A.W., was an acronym for Randall A. Wulff, a Canadian stockbroker with a hedonistic lifestyle. Others have come to believe that he was one of America’s most prolific drug barons; a figure constantly on the run from prosecution, while some even argue that Lewis wasn’t even of this earth.Few would care if the music recorded on that day was mediocre, but what remains most enthralling is the uneasy brilliance of this mirage; a brilliance that forces the record to seem more relevant in today’s age of blogging and online streaming than in 1983.Whatever the case, Lewis remains a spectre, a mere reflection of that final monochrome still taken by the photographer he hired that day. And yes, his cheque bounced too.