Turkish sound artist Anadol (Gözen Atila) and French writer-musician Marie Klock have teamed up once again teamed up to create an upcoming album, Manivelles (May 15). The first single, 'Rentrer à la maison', also arrives in video form, a wonderous home movie-style affair in grainy VHS quality that very much fits the vibe of the song — the drear brick walls of the suburbs; driveways and gardens; dad is washing the dog.
Klock sings of the trials we face when confronted with that most comforting yet most alienating of things: returning home. How far we come only to arrive home again! Whether it's Christmas or someone's birthday or popping over for a cup of tea, to sit around the same table and hear the same stories and feel the same way as the child version of you all over again — a bittersweet tragicomedy (or comitragedy?).
With characteristic Klock humour, the lyrics for 'Rentrer à la maison', for the chorus at least, translate to
Whenever you go home
You start off with great intentions
And then, shove ‘em up your ass
Nice and deep, nice and deep
For some, I imagine that sounds about right. And with the vocal melody and the accompanying soundscape, the song has the melodic drone of a moralistic folksong or classic chanson, while during the verse the vocal skips over the lines like beat poetry.
Atila's instrumental work features time-worn analogue synth and thin drum machine beat, the kind of sounds that might emerge from a dusty childhood keyboard inherited from some uncle or another. It's as if the pair, one having accompanied the other to their parents' house, actively composed and recorded the song during such a visit, barricaded in a tiny time capsule of a bedroom and won't emerge until everyone has mercifully gone to bed.
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The video for 'Rentrer à la maison' was created by video artist and film-maker Timo Schierhorn and was produced by Hamburg-based filmmaker collective Auge Altona. Unfortunately we do not have a name for the dog. [Edit: The dog's name is Fips, and his owner was Schierhorn's grandfather; it's a special posthumous appearance from them both.]
A robust pizzicato arpeggio picks its way through the aching air of ‘Les Hybres’, a hybrid track by French musicmaker Odalie. Urgency arrives as ticking modular synth chimes in like a clock ticking too quickly through the seconds, the bow now drawing across the strings and giving an extra richness to the track.
It’s not just this difference in organic sounds though, but the subsequent evolution of the track as the synthesiser grows into a many limbed beast, a creature of plasma that tumbles and twists as the cello strains and scratches below. Human and machine, soft and harsh, ‘Les Hybres’ is the exploration of biomechanical creativity.
RPG meets jazz in 'Atlantico', a sandswept soundscape from Madrid-founded, Paris-based band Quartetto Minimo. With a guitar melody – composed one summer in southern France – that summons a kind of intrepid videogame castle exploration and sparkling harp that harks back to faraway dark-wood-panelled rooms fable baroque (let's talk E.M.M.A's 'Mindmaze') a time and place, nowhere concrete, gets a bold, impressionistic illustration.
"It's funny that you said it sounds like baroque," guitar player Nicolas Arzimanoglou Mas tells us over email, "because for the past 2 years the bass player and I have actually been playing baroque music, with different instruments and bands of course."
Combine it with organic rough textured bass that feels noir and fantasy, and drums that give it pace and intrigue, and there is excitement, the urgency of jazz merging this into the battle music, penultimate level themes; in terms of real videogame comparisons, it sounds much like the 'Gerudo Valley' theme from Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The medieval-summoning chamber aesthetics with kinetic energy of improvisation and quick tempo gives it that VGM dynamism. A new jazz release that crosses boundaries and conjures a world away from the traditional; it's chamber jazz.
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This track is taken from the album of the same name, Atlantico by Quartetto Minimo. Feel free to stream and/or download it on Bandcamp.
There's something wholly Super Mario 64 about this track from French musicmaker Trudge. But not at first. It begins with a glittering portal—a shoesqueak synth arpeggio that grades into an intense sparkle; a wormhole that spills out into a void where rapid hammering kicks and hi-hats tick urgently and cymbals clash valvelike. All for a minal, mechanical intensity that summons the same sort of drama that begins the theme for 'Hazy Maze Cave' in Super Mario 64.
Rockfalls of cutting rave breakbeats gleam in 'From Sorrow To Darkness' as the kick continues its syncopated thump beneath all the fresh crash of the percussion. Airy synth chords also summon that Mario level: a breathy, breezy sound that feels at once grand and dilapidated simultaneously. From the orchestra at his disposal, Trudge adds and subtracts with compositional attention to detail. Atmospheric and cave-like.
By the end of the track, the musicmaker has conjured the portal again—the arpeggio swirling and growing stormcloudic above and widening into the transportative sheen that it was in the beginning. A dynamic, transforming journey, hefty panic attack flavours of rave rumbles and the dark bump of the kick taking us through the caverns and trailing tunnels of a mind in tumult, lit with the pale gloam of ancient synth.
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'From Sorrow To Darkness' by Trudge, a dungeon-like exploration of the mind in techno symphony, is taken from his upcoming 100 EP. This is set for release via 1Ø Pills Mate on 19th April. You may, if you like, pre-order it in vinyl form or digitally from Bandcamp.
As gentle and ostensibly ‘world music’ as this track appears to be, there is something darker within; it lulls you into a state of exotic pastoral bliss, with textures that swirl around like the spirit of a rainforest, percussive ticks and clicks amidst an organic drumbeat sailing through all the sights and sounds of typically beautiful Earth. But soon we are sucked into a swamp of mystery, clanging metallics in the thin air and mists crawling across the once green vista, the vision of cave mouths yawning craggy monstrous, the untameable force at the heart of everything.
These two universes inhabit the original ‘Harmony’ by globally minded French musicmaker CloZee - a sort of slow sashaying to some globular heartbeat mixed with a distorted synth drop - which is echoed in Axel Thesleff
’s treatment of the track, a minimal reworking that pits the languor of leafy slo-house against bare bubbling beats and stark synths, a contrast that retains a sense of exoticism but dilutes it out into something more generally beautiful, whilst creating tons of space in the existential thump of the drop, a wholly unnatural counterpart to the soft omnipresence of natural, forest-conjuring sounds.
Paris resident and human person Teki Latex has done a lot. From associating with production company and artist collective Kourtrajmé, appearing in videos and shorts alongside people like Vincent Cassel, as well as rapping with seminal French rap group TTC, to heading up A&R on pioneering underground label Sound Pellegrino which he co-founded with fellow TTC member Orgasmic, as well as his own online "DJ-centric" show Overdrive Infinity, Teki has been spearheading a new style of sound this year: Bérite.
Earlier this year Teki posted a mix on SoundCloud called 'Bérite Club Music'. He accompanied this with a description which outlines the birth of the new genre, originating from a group of online acquaintances who would come to Overdrive Infinity every week. "They were all lovers of Grime, US Club styles, Ballroom, Kuduro, Global club music, you name it, just like me," recalls Teki. "As I befriended them, we got the idea to try and think of a new identity for a french club sound that didn’t exist anywhere else and that would be a confluence of some of the various electronic music styles which had an impact on the French audience."
However, as this "embryo of a new genre was slowly being born" a gas explosion in the building next door made the studio unusable and later forced the parent company Dailymotion to shut down all the projects attached to it, including Overdrive Infinity. "We no longer had a place to meet regularly," Teki tells us, "but that idea of a new french sound kept flourishing, becoming more and more concrete as we all kept getting together at club nights and whatnot."
Towards the of 2016, and named after Rue de Bérite in honour of the street where the studio was situated, the first Bérite tracks appeared online and at small club nights.
"And just like that a movement was born."
And as 2017 lays itself to rest, we ask Teki for his top tracks of the year. Arriving from musicmakers 50% French, 50% other European, these morsels are indicative of newness, Bérite, experiments in merging forms and styles, and though dance-ready very suitable for home listening. Plus a surprise at the #1 slot. Read on☟
10) Lorenzo Senni – XAllegroX
I've praised Lorenzo Senni's music so often in the last few years it has almost become ridiculous but what can I say, his latest one is yet another beautiful slice of drum-less trance. With 'XAllegroX' it's almost as if he has reached a point where the difference between his music and the music of Swedish House Mafia has gotten virtually non-existent, which is obviously a fantastic thing.
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9) Finn – Sometimes The Going Gets A Little Tough
I am amazed by Finn's skills and cleverness of selection behind the decks, as I am obsessed with his ability to create music which applies a grimey way of chopping up samples to classic soul-sampling house music. This big end of year banger is a perfect example of that. Even better when played at 150 bpm in the middle of a juke/ghettotech set.
8) Clubkelly – Need U
A French Bérite Club Music-sympathising member exiled in London and signed to Crazylegs, Clubkelly is a musical prodigy, a lovable troll, a troublemaker but also an amazing person to hang out with. With 'Need U' he explores a sound at the crossroad of weird broken club music, vintage Roulé/bangalter house, and Bérite. Filtered house, but distorted and raw with no fucks given.
7) Lanark Artefax – Touch Absence
This one is already in everyone's end of year list, what can I say that hasn't been said already? It's a dope track with a definitive "Detroit by way of Glasgow" feel. I missed electro as a genre and even though it never went away, it's great to have it back in the spotlight through a new generation of producers like Lanark Artefax.
6) Images – Les Démons de Minuit (Le Dom Edit)
A Bérite Club Music anthem and a favorite of my year-long residency at Nuits Fauves in Paris. To foreigners it's a dope Bérite edit of a catchy French boogie song but to French people it carries a whole different sort of weight. 'Les Démons de Minuit' is the song that was playing at my mother's wedding. Since the '80s it has been a bit synonymous with low-brow mainstream French pop in the mind of a lot of so-called purists. So remixing it and tapping into that sort of weird French popular music heritage to create something new and avant-garde is almost a political act in itself. On French dancefloors, it gives that track a kind of "Oh no did he really go there?" dimension which I absolutely live for. Le Dom's Castle Owner EP dropping in 2018 will confirm that he is an absolute genius and a master at creating a new form of electro-tinged Bérite sure to become a landmark.
5) Sunareht – Hyul
Like Le Dom, Sunareht is a member of the Paradoxe Club label/crew and like Le Dom he makes Bérite Club Music except his approach to the genre is completely different. His way of paying homage to the French club genealogy is to apply a sort of experimental approach to the art of sampling filtered loops as heard in the classic "French touch" era. He takes French touch music and turns it on its head, mutating it into a drum-less, post-everything, permanent-build-up-with-no-drop state. The result is a beautiful home listening experience which remains playable (or at least mixable – superimposable in clubs – akin to Lorenzo Senni's work). With this first EP he established his signature sound and the demos I heard from the 2nd one confirm that he has now fully mastered this incredible unique style.
4) Kekra – 9 Milli
This was a big hit in France in 2017. Basically a dope French rapper dropping super catchy bars on top of an old school 2-step garage beat. So fresh and alien and made with style and different from everything in the French rap world these days. This song really made a difference and it's a pleasure to hear French kids singing it by heart whenever I played it this year.
3) Errorsmith – My Party
I have been a fan of Errorsmith and all the projects he's been involved in since the early 2000s and his album Superlative Fatigue is the album I've always dreamt he would make. Techno in spirit but rhythmically closer to African and Caribbean dance music rhythms mutated through the filter of the synth he created: Razor. This track is just his voice gone through weird effects + a hand clap. It's a simple as fuck techno-organic crazy weirdo party starter and you wish it would never end. I have never heard anything like this.
2) De Grandi – 94120 Groove
The one original Bérite Club Music hit we needed in 2017 by De Grandi the most active producer in the genre, another member of Paradoxe Club label. This Afrotrap-influenced banger goes so well with everything and bangs so hard as a standalone track as well. I'm so proud of that whole crew for creating a genre and a scene in Paris in 2017. We needed that so much.
1) The Super Mario Players feat. Kate Davis – Jump Up Superstar
So this one has a story. It started when I first watched the trailer for Super Mario Odyssey early in the year. I was scared to commit to buying a Switch, I was still living in my old TV-less apartment with vague dreams of moving in the near future. Zelda looked great but felt like too much of an emotional investment (I remember getting nightmares through Ocarina of Time when I was younger, same with the one where you turn into a wolf – way too stressful – and I never managed to finish any of them) but Mario is the kind of stuff that appeals to an old casual gamer uninterested in first person shooters and fascinated by colorful Japanese graphics like me. So the trailer blew me away and I thought the music was perfect. I moved into a new apartment later in the year and got myself a giant-ass television and I thought, you know what let me treat myself to the maxxx and get a Switch with Mario. I enjoyed the shit out of that game but halfway through it i remember thinking "when the hell are they going to play the fucking awesome song from the trailer already??? Probably at the very end..." Spoiler Alert: it comes right in the middle, in an unforgettable sequence taking place in the fake-New-York-equivalent-level in the Mario Odyssey world "New Donk City" (actually the city where the ancestral game Donkey Kong took place). It's the level that made everyone go "oh that new Mario game looks like GTA Mario!"
So Basically Pauline the girl you saved in Donkey Kong back in the '80s is now the mayor of the city and she asks you to help her putting together a festival. Once that is done, the reward comes in the form of a truly beautiful sequence; It's night time in New Donk City and the whole population is outside celebrating, there are lights, beautiful visuals, business men and women in fedoras (as they should) and fireworks. While the mayor and her band are singing the incredible 'Jump Up Superstar' song, you are required to play a rendition of the old school 8-bit Super Mario Bros. game (actually a cross between that and Donkey Kong) on big transparent panels held in between the skyscrapers of the city, and each segment of the song corresponds roughly to a segment of the game, so it creates some sort of semi-synchronized rhythmic build-up between the action and the music... all the while this crazy, insane, catchy, perfectly-executed Broadway showtune is really resonating with someone like me who grew up with those cliché images and sounds of classic New York with its yellow cabs and pastrami sandwiches and who is fascinated by nocturnal views of big cities with skyscrapers. Add to that the nostalgia effect of playing 8-bit Mario... It was an incredible moment, I was playing alone with the lights off and wondering "what the hell is happening to me, am I, for the first time in my life, ACTUALLY crying while playing a video game?" Simply put it is the most beautiful sequence in a video game EVER and you can quote me on that.
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Keep up to date with the latest Sound Pellegrino releases on SoundCloud.
The chaotic original 'Slow Descent' by Shlohmo, with its spooky twisted rounded organic synth sounds and vital menagerie of clipped click-clacking tight tumbling percussion, a dark shade of broken beat flavours, gets a reworking here courtesy of French musicmaker Tommyjarvis, styled after the Friday the 13th series protagonist of the same name. This new version takes the almost breakbeat speed and agility of the original and crushes it, that jittering nervous mood eradicated and replaced with something that has been under the hardships of life, a tract of overdriven saturated noise, the kinetic energy transformed into that of jostling saturation, a condensing of synth flavours.
The flighty acrobatic beat is no longer, and if any remnants of it remain in this new greyscale moss-ridden ruin of a track, they are slowed down, crippled from their original outing and now pulsing occasionally beneath the new viscous shroud of the track, Tommyjarvis creating crashing crowds of crinkled synth that spin damaged and zinging, the semblance of a melody on this dark nocturnal breeze, the rest of it a swamp of curling crunch, the power sapped from its abrasive bubblings by bassy kicks that fall into the electrogasm of it all and ripple slovenly, a trial of despondence and screaming noise that crouches in the corners of your mind, the abyssal yin to the original track's cascading yang.
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So the Tommyjarvis remix of Shlohmo's Dark Red album track 'Slow Descent' can be downloaded for free, as you can see on the SoundCloud player above.
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Tommyjarvis is a part of Rouen-based musicmaking collective KNGS.
While the original 'Beneath The Lights' by Brooklyn duo Cool Company is an intimate stream of warped ukulele sounds and trickling textures, exuding this atmosphere of sun-drenched romance, some fluidity of emotion existing in its slow closeness, the lips-to-ear silken vocals—while all this is true, this remix turns things up a notch, takes this atmosphere and expands it, increases the tempo and casts a level two spell of danceability with undeniable body moving effects. Set now to a lightly shuffling house beat, joined by electro tom accoutrements, a soft indomitable bassline swoons with subtle elasticity and low robust tones, gorgeous repetition of the plaintive groove the actual backbone of this new rendition—"adding a groovy spin to it to make you nod your head," the remixer himself Jean Tonique tells us.
The quicker pace of this track takes away the personal nature, somewhat, of the original, with the vocals now faster, more like something you can sing along to rather than something to be serenaded by, as in the original. With this, cool mists of synth veil the beat, pockmarked by sidechain, melting paradise steel pans, sharp guitar licks adding to this sense of tropico-casual, this hand-in-pocket slow sway with a holiday romance feel of it, the undeniable cool now heightened. It feels very much like the precursor to or the aftermath of the intimacy of the original track, Jean Tonique moving the soul of it from the sultry confines of four walls and carnal romance and leading them outside, out into the open to feel the world, truly under the lights, for a spin beneath an aching vast sunset on a tropical sky.
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You can download this track for free, as you can see above.
Until now Raphaël D'herves was better known as the brain behind French dreampop unit, Pegase, as well as the more electro Minitel Rose, but now he ventures into the music world under his own name, gracing our ears with a luscious debut called 'Rêves'. It's the beginning of an ambitious project in which D'hervez aims "mix Christophe (french singer from the 70's), contemporary R&B artist such as Frank Ocean, and classious french production (Air)."
The classious (classy) part is certainly right. The production is elegant, dripping with clarity and distinguished sheen; from the offset of the track it only takes one element to attract and bewitch the listener, and that is the handclap, the clopping delicious dolcelatte unaffected unpretentious untamperedwith handclap. From here, ahh, the jacuzzi satisfaction of those blomglomming heavenly vibraphone, the dusty percussive rasp of the bongo, the deep crisp simple bass groove, the antsy excitement of the shaker's roving rattle. The clear quality of the vocals as they weave catchy melodies throughout, warmly layered in the chorus. The sparkle of electric guitar arpeggios.
And towards the end of the track, the soaring violin, the rising tide of electronics, the glimmering decayed crescendo of it all, provides a magnificent finale to what started off so simply, each instrument each sound slotting in with precision to build the vision of D'hervez. Watching the video for the track, as each instrument gets its well deserved close-up, each one making up this audio treasure trove, you can see the pure love of sound, giving literal ocular illustration for what can be heard well enough: passion for making music.
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'Rêves' is taken from a forthcoming four-track EP by Raphael D'hervez called L'Oiseau Tonnerre, which literally means "thunder bird", out 2nd June on Nantes-based label FVTVR, of which D'hervez is the founder.
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The video for 'Rêves' was directed by the artist's brother, Tristan D'hervez, filmed at the studio where the EP was recorded. In addition the track features
Antonin Pierre on electric and acoustic guitar, Jordane Saunal on violin, with choral vocals supplied by Ana Benabdelkarim.
Mr Oizo, oh Mr Oizo, it's Mr Oizo. I saw a tweet from Mr Oizo at some point in time before today (let's just say this one to be done with it) that said this Charli XCX collaboration called Hand In The Fire was going to drop sometime soon and well, yeah, it's today. It's arrived today, 14 days before Christmas, ho-ho-ho.
The headline and USP of this EP is the Charli XCX-featuring bit and it's what everyone's gone with:
Pitchfork: Mr. Oizo Teams With Charli XCX for "Hand in the Fire"
Stereogum: Mr Oizo – “Hand In The Fire” (Feat. Charli XCX)
Pigeons & Planes: LISTEN TO MR. OIZO AND CHARLI XCX’S “HAND IN THE FIRE”
The FADER: Mr. Oizo And Charli XCX Share "Hand In The Fire"
Idolator: Charli XCX Returns To Springy Electro-Pop On Mr. Oizo Collab “Hand In The Fire”: Listen
Beatport: HEAR MR. OIZO’S CURVEBALL COLLABORATION WITH CHARLI XCX, “HAND IN THE FIRE”
The 405: Charli XCX features on Mr Oizo track, 'Hand In The Fire'
NME: Charli XCX teams up with Mr Oizo – 'I was inspired by Ed Banger'
Paper: LISTEN TO MR. OIZO'S WARPED TROPI-LEANING TRACK FEATURING CHARLI XCX
DIY: CHARLI XCX IS WORKING WITH ED BANGER’S MR OIZO
FACT: Stream Charli XCX and Mr. Oizo’s ‘Hand In The Fire’
And so on and so forth in different languages on multiple sites and blogs around the world (one of the middle ones, The 405, I wrote that one). Oizo and Charli XCX, boom, ruling the world and whatever. It shows that MR OIZO can produce for pop, that's one thing that it shows, and very well at that, of course of course: bass booms and cold skeletal low-end melodies and skiffly swaying beat with orchestra hits exploding, raw tom rolls for extra flavour, plus the hook in FX'd vox wah-wahing in the appropriate places.
Mr Oizo has collaborated with singers before, twice on Lamb's Anger (2008): with Uffie on 'Steroids' and with Carmen Castro, whom Oizo calls "a mysterious person", on 'Two Takes It'; and more recently with Marilyn Manson on 'Solid', which scared and worried me but it was fun nonetheless. None of these, however, overshadowed a whole release, which is the case with the Charli XCX collaboration – three other tracks appear on the Hand In The Fire EP, one of which is an instrumental version of the Charli-featuring title track so what's up with that?
What is up with that? What is the actual problem here? Is there even a problem? Maybe, maybe there is. Like, the instrumental version, although it's a nice instrumental like I said a couple of paragraphs above, does not excite me a great deal, like it's definitely been made with a conscious effort of leaving space to putt a vocal on top, making it with a cyclical formula in pop song format. The actual song 'Hand In The Fire' feels weird: here's a different scenario: This is a Charli XCX track and then it's revealed that the producer is Mr Oizo, nice yeah, it's a catchy tune, jostling and slithering — somehow that feels cooler and more natural than this in its actual obvious collaboration state. Why?
Because the other two tracks on the EP are sooo Mr Oizo you'd be a fool to miss how typically Oizo-sounding they are, and how similar they are in feel and speed, which many publications indeed seem to have overlooked, drooling instead over the "curveball" (misfit???) collaboration itself because Give Pop A Chance and because Pageviews Mean Prizes and because Dat SEO.
I mean, there's 'A Rekurd', which with all its unrelenting repetition of the eponymous sample – "a record, a record, a record" – and mad sirens is an intense dance track, ending with a simple juggernaut of overdriven crunchy kicks and the vocal sample itself, filled throughout with familiar creeping atonal arpeggios. But sitting above this both actually in terms of track number on the EP and also in my esteem is 'Being Flat': yaaaaa! This one is nuts, perfectly nuts, wtf does nuts even mean, it just came out, I'm sorry. It's that blaring dissonant menacing groove that is so comfortable and yet so nerve-singeingly body-affecting that you can almost feel the tiniest hairs on your body vibrating with it.
It's those little ad-libs to the beat, a slicing hi-hat thrown into the pattern; it's that ambient soaring synth break providing liquid gentle oasis between the hard jittering notes of the second part and the delicious substantial bass patterns of the first half. It's the robust sounds in the beat, thumping and full of texture. It's the crowd noises in the background, which add depth and effuse the placebo effect of feeling like you're at an actual party.
When these two tracks finished, and the instrumental 'Hand In The Fire' began to play I paused it. I PAUSED IT. Now all I have in my head is the Charli XCX collab and I'm confused at why I don't like it all that much if it's in my head? I guess labelling things really does change your opinion even before you've sampled such things.
"The medium is in the message": in this instance the message is Charli XCX song, clearly that is the case. The medium, however, via or as part of a Mr Oizo release, loads it with meaning and expectations. Association kicks in and, being a human being, I cannot help but be influenced by how things are packaged; everyone's perception of something changes depending on its delivery. If you don't know Mr Oizo, then cool, Charli XCX is working with someone; do a little google, oh yeah, this Quentin Dupieux, he's done some cool stuff, he's pretty well known – therefore Charli is held in even higher esteem. But for those who know Mr Oizo, or know and like Mr Oizo's music rather, having a Charli XCX song delivered through his musical output feels jarring, even wrong.
This leads me to conclude that this song, this EP with its typical and more digestible Oizo sound outside of the title track, is meant for those who are not well acquainted with the French producer or his music. At the same time, it's sort of fan service because both these tracks do not exactly push new ground for Oizo, serving as a nostalgic vessel for pre-existing Oizo-lovers; indeed as of this current moment, 'Being Flat' has had more plays than 'Hand In The Fire', showing that fans will find their way to the morsel they like the most and play it maybe a few times cause they love it and they gotta show someone else, too. Oizo fans get to see Oizo tackle pop production, and he does it well – perhaps the reason why the instrumental version is also included.
Charli XCX fans, on the other hand, get to hear a new and unique somewhat Santigold-sounding song and then, hidden behind the cover story, there's these other tracks from the same producer, buzzing but not too abrasive and instantly addictive for those with an ounce of dance-leaning tendencies in their souls. Everyone's happy.
What first struck me about this track is its delicious noises – the sumptuous tongue-twizzling ear-tickling sounds at the upper end of the spectrum trickling and bouncing, eye-poppingly alive and full of the essence of found sounds: actual real world sounds put into music.
What is it? It's called 'Being With You' and it's by Mincha a musicmaker from Bordeaux, France. Aside from the noises I mentioned above – the subversive opulence of broken glass, running or maybe even boiling water, a crunchy noise that sounds like someone taking a huge bite out of an apple, little insectoid metallic noises, sharp ticking hi-hats – it is propelled forward by a broken garage-flavoured rhythm, offbeat thudding kicks working alongside syncopated cleanly clacking snare hits, supported by the constant cascade of percussion, resulting in a highly kinetic vibe.
On top of this shuffling beat we alternate between icy, atmospheric feeling – with cymbals shimmering silver into the void, slivers of synth providing cold singular hits, gentle phasing sounds, soft muted bloops, the occasional smart jazzy flourish of double-bass, unintelligible vocal samples echoing in the freezing expansive frame of the track – and something more intense, with just-as-icy synths skirling with slow trance flavour, piercing the cloudy atmosphere with angular sides
The whole thing ending with rich piano to round off what has been a voyage into a cosmos of unknown twinkling objects, an outpost of cleansing energy in cold, dark space; a tale of deeply nocturnal dance music, highlighting the unknown echoes of the night and thoughtful introspection with a collision of styles and an impressive inventory of imaginative ornamentation.
ATMOSPHERE. Atmosphere is a big deal. Without atmosphere, or ambiance if you will, cocktail lounges would not feel chilled out yet classy at the same time, forests would not effuse as much peacefulness as they do, a spa would not be as relaxing, theme parks would not be as exciting — put simply, atmosphere is important. And, if you didn't notice, the link between all those aforementioned places is sound. or MUSIC. Music creates atmosphere. One might just like singing along to music, or dancing to it, but, perhaps unbeknownst to the singer or dancer, these things are being acted out in the midst of ambiance or atmosphere conjured by music; it affects not only an individual mood, but the mood of an entire locale, wherever the music is in earshot. It is the particular character of our surroundings.
Why am I talking so much about atmosphere? Because of nice morsel of music I stumbled across over the weekend. Le morceau est creé par un producteur français qui s'appelle loto retina, et le son s'appelle «première séance». Alors, l'anglophone pourrait assumer «séance» en le sens de «séance de spiritisme» – en fait, je fait exactement ça! Donc je l'ai écouté, attendant pour quelque chose fantasmagorique, mais plûtot j'entendis des sons beaux ondulant, des melodies flous répétant – l'atmosphère divine de la musique lo-fi.
Whoa, what happened there? That was weird.
But anyway, loto retina has shared his "first session" not his first "seance", which would have been decidedly more spooky than a session (of musicmaking). It's a little old, 4 months says SoundCloud, but that's neither here nor there. The sounds of 'première séance' are hypnotic, a combination of lightly undulating melodies soaked in dreamy delay, and one-note bassy rumblings beneath these fluttering sounds, all of it soaked in gorgeous soft lo-fi aesthetics.
The first section, for there is one – marked by a strange dinosaur screech or synth-made scream – is brighter, rising higher than the second goes, which for the most part follows a mesmerising loop (except for one cutesy melody standing out at the 2:19 mark) all the way till this sweet little track's end, where it is beset by monstrous scathing mechanical noises, metallic analogue vocal chords shouting, and where the sounds become slightly distorted, muffled, mangled, finishing up a relaxing and intriguing sojourn into a world of pure, innocent atmosphere.
Not sure where this guy is from but I'm going to make some sort of half-educated guess. So… yeah, I think he might be from Paris. And in fact – could be male or female. So let's say… them. They might be from Paris because they tagged the song as 'Paris' (also a Parisian musicmaker commented on the track, too, so…). Then again, they've also tagged it with The, Imaginarium, Midnight, Beats, 2015, and Hadrian. So who can say anything for sure? Not I. Not I.
So anyway, the track is called 'Past Midnight' and it's by somebody making music under the name GHOST CRUISE. The etymology of the name… a ghost cruise I suppose. Either a cruise for ghosts or a cruise you go on to see ghosts. Sorry, too much talking.
The track itself is gloriously wonky, owing not only to the skipping off-kilter beat that thuds and thumps along, nor just to the the seemingly arhythmic synth bass bouncing throughout, but also to the sounds higher up the scale. Harp flourishes sweep as if endlessly conjuring a flashback, backdropped with phasing sounds and punctuated with zither icicles and delicate strings. Something wholly fitting the title 'After Midnight', summoning the unreal moods and atmospheres that effuse from the heart of night itself.
I first wrote about these guys a while ago, finding the beat and vocal harmonies and, well, everything about their track 'Camel' quite difficult to not become addicted to. They're from Paris and they're French and they're called SAUVAGE and this track is called 'Marée Noire' which is an epithet (literally means "black tide") for an oil spill in French.
This one is quite different to what I've heard before; it rings with juddering electro energy, bass jouncing along with the rollicking beat joining it, electric chords jolting across the galloping path of the rhythm. This is at least how it sounds in the first half. But a middle section announces the arrival of a fresh-rain-against-a-window gentle drum pattern, the entry point for the vocals, too, which almost whisper in this quiet section.
The track's second half is all groove, a contrast to the first half; synth chords seem full of feeling zap into life – which seem to breath heavily at the end – the bass holds court with its simple groovesome rhythm accented with octave-skipping notes, the vocal melody is not over-highlighted and smoothly sails across the crashing, raging waves as electric arpeggios sparkle like twinkling stars in the eventual crescendo of the track. All that's left is the kinetic beat.
This totem for a new wave of indie music comes from SAUVAGE's very recent four-track Jadis EP ("jadis" is like a way to say "once" in French with connotations of "long ago", too). Check it out here if you wanna hear more from these guys.
I stumbled across this the other day and was literally like wtf where has this been hiding. It is an EP called AVRIL by Parisian musicmaker, Loumar. Bass-heavy, experimental and all-encompassing, it is a captivating collection of sounds. To give you an idea of what that is like, I've selected 'GROUND' (or 'Ground'? whatever) – surprisingly the least popular track on the EP, but by far the most… unique.
Beginning with, and punctuated throughout by, samples from the 2012 Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom, it feels like an ode to dreams – not sleepy dreams, but waking, real-life, what-do-you-want-to-do-when-you're-older dreams; the kind of dreams that you forget and remember years later having done nothing about them. In 'GROUND', Loumar presents a personality that will support your dreams, the booming submarine kicks of the beat playing beneath the repeated words: "I don't let you hit the ground, no."
But this head-in-the-clouds mentality is underpinned by a miasmic soup of sounds, a confused swirling of clap clusters, ambient whale-song synth, disco-conjuring cowbells alongside ticking shakers – suggesting that this is the ground, i.e. real life, somewhat doom-laden, deep, and difficult to comprehend at the best of times. Even the refrain itself is spookily pitch-shifted, effusing this feel of dangerous delusion; you would think that the sample at the end – "I wanna go on adventures, I think. Not get stuck in one place" – would cancel this out, carve out a warmer feeling, but even this is cold.
On the whole, it feels like inverted dance music, narcotic and nauseating, dysphoric, warped beyond recognition, leaning almost towards witch-house in genre (if you excuse my saying so), having extended its tendrillar feelers into the deeper burrows of Loumar's mind. But it's brilliant.
Ahh… so we meet again, SHAM AN! Last time we heard from this Montpellier-dwelling producer, he was vibing out an unofficial Burial remix, which I said was basically "fluidity chopped and punctuated with a slo-house beat comprising of cricket-like percussion snapping snares and erratic-heartbeat kicks." You can imagine it, right? Dark and ambient. Previous to this, if you're interested in looking into Mr SHAM AN's backstory, he remixed a song, 'Voices Of War' on fellow Frenchman Tealeaf's Yugen EP.
But now! But now: we have NOT a remix from Pierre-Emmanuel Récio (the real name of this musicmaker), but an entirely original song, 'Ghosts'.
As neutrally spooky and expansively ethereal as you'd expect a true ghost to be, the track is firstly flooded with subtle waves of ambient, fog-like synth; the first spotting of a ghost, when your blood chills and your spine seems to want to jump from your trembling body. But soon wisps of synth melody make their way in softly, combined with heartwarming strings that send an all-clear signal – the phantom is not as terrifying as you thought it was; in fact, it's speaking pleasantly to you. At 1:40, all sense of fear dissipates with an almost comically wilting pitch shift.
The rest of the song rolls trappishly with the bright percussion that'd been the order of the day from the beginning, rollicking hi-hats and shining cymbals, which in the first half combined with kicks to provide dynamic pulses of energy behind the song's grey, misty exterior. There's one particular word that I'd describe this song as, and that's "pure". Pure. It sounds pure. Refreshing. Well-balanced. Not too dark and spooky but not utterly euphoric either; it harbours a relaxed spirit of clarity.
This was premiered exclusively on a site that doesn't even exist yet, Mayne – a France-based (and perhaps France-centric, too, but who knows) "MUSIC SHARING PLATFORM / BLOG / INDEPENDENT LABEL". Despite not having an actual www site, there is a SoundCloud, Twitter & Facebook account with which you may get acquainted if you feel like it.
Taking the highly textured and lonely euphoria of the stunningly waterfallish Burial original 'Hiders' as his basic foundation, French maker of music SHAM AN (shaman) offers up an equally stunning remix. Who is SHAM AN? He is from Montpellier, his real name is Pierre–Emmanuel Récio, he makes good sounds. Done. Next.
But seriously like, this is a great song. It might as well be an original song. In fact, I bet many artists or people or whoever would get pretty angsty about unofficial remixes so maybe SHAM AN should've just called it something else for a title and said "YO HERE'S AN ORIGINAL" because, aside from some sampling, a similar vibe and rhythm, it's different. But this is semantics or maybe even just a pale rambling excuse for semantics, not music, and I'm sorry about that. Just listen up to some MUSIC.
It's a gradual climb from the dark ambience of the beginning of this track, but soon we are into the flesh of it, the rich portions of sound that thicken into a kind of heavy water; fluidity is the name of the game here, fluidity chopped and punctuated with a slo-house beat comprising of cricket-like percussion snapping snares and erratic-heartbeat kicks. It's a stream of sounds, a stream of noises, artificial and natural, beautifully half-preserving the samples from Burial's original in muffled ancient farflung capsules opening up and effusing their ghostly lo-fi sounds in the tide of warm synth. There is a heartrendingly empty feeling in the track, evoking the reclusives that (maybe) inspired the name and sound of the original 'Hiders', perpetually lonesome yet in that isolation is a fragile beauty kept alive by the joy of experience and life without too much involvement, and a swirling sweeping sadness due to that lack of interactivity, that lack of touch, that seekerless will-less attitude, ever-hiding. Or something.
Premiering on Mixmag blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah here is Parisian producer Bobmo with new track 'It Is Happening Again'. With a Twin Peaks-inspired name – "It is happening again" is what The Giant says to Detective Cooper in a nightmarish premonition – and actually sampling those very words from the cult show, it's taken from Bobmo's upcoming two-track EP, When I Look, released on Marble, a label which he calls home (also home to other French acts including Myd, Canblaster, Para One, etc.).
So what can you expect from this dancefloor-destined number? It's dark and brooding, matching the subject material of its namesake, exploding with the brutal thump of techno, each kick snare-hit bringing up distorted dust – rattling floorboards and thundering skies float in its atmosphere. Distorted squelch bass bounces along in stuttering madness as high pitched overdriven whistle saw-wave synth rises and falls in and out of earshot, sometimes chirping pulsar blips, sometimes screaming sawmill grinding. Listen for nightmares and dance-desire.
There's this wondrous mechanical fuzz to it, a cautionless evaporation of clear-cut sounds for something deathly organic, frying in dry dust darkness – a pressure cooker of noise and danceable beats. Noisy and explosive, it's techno with acidic lilt, and you can't help but let yourself become infected with its virulent pulse. So yeah, if you liked this, there's another one where this came from on the When I Look EP, out 31st March. Eat it up if you feel like it.
Encore une autre semaine se glisse dans le passé; encore un autre article en français. Si tu ne sais pas de quoi je parle, écoute – je suis anglais, j'écris sur de la nouvelle musique une fois par semaine en français, je lutte. Ça me fatigue.
Mais la bonté de mon coeur me persuade d'écrire plus en plus en plus en français, en anglais, en n'importe-quoi-ais, afin de partager la musique avec de plus en plus en plus des gens dans le monde. Quel noblesse! Tu penses pas? Bof, alors, lis ce que j'ai écrit, écoute la musique que j'ai trouvée, passe un bon mais bref moment. À plus.
YES/NO Guest Mix 007 :: BLUFRANK's Driving Alone Mix
Le septième guest mix pour YES/NO, celui-ci vient d'un producteur BLURFRANK du Caire. Il s'appel «Driving Alone» (français: «conduire seul») Mix, qui montre ses influences musicales, allant de super ultime chillwave de Toro Y Moi, à la danse lisse du millénaire (c'est-à-dire, Moloko). Les deux sons habitent dans ce morceau de BLUFRANK, où il mélange des cordes chaleureuses et une ambiance hallucinante avec un rythme dure et une tendance pour danser. Sa chanson «TR-808 & A Babe» est un bon exemple.
Lindsay Lowend – Basement Dweller Overture
Mon dieu! Merde! Cette chanson est géante, sérieux – son créateur est un génie (toutes ses chansons sont incroyables) appelé Lindsay Lowend. Pas «Lohan» – LOWEND. Tu le connais? Si oui, bon, si non, c'est bon aussi, parce que maintenant tu va le rencontrer et sa musique. Dans «Basement Dweller Overture» (français: sous-sol-habitant ouverture) Lindsay Lowend, nom et prénom Antonio Mendez, évoque l'ambiance des jeux-vidéo sans leurs images pour créer une atmosphère imaginative et aventureuse. Presque en trois mouvements symphoniques, le morceau progresse de l'electro qui suinte avec le dubstep lourd et sa basse dodue, puis une rafale de piano frais, finissant avec electro-funk glitch-chargé. Les sons de Lindsay Lowend sont trop délicieux, introduisant le style urbain (hip hop, juke, dubstep, etc.) à la geekerie de la musique jeux-vidéo. Je l'adore.
SUNSET – Ava
Pour une fois, je suis en train de parler de musique française. Enfin. SUNSET est un duo qui vient de Paris: l'artiste Raphaël Siboni, et Franck Rivoire (mieux connu comme producteur/DJ, Danger). Dans leur nouveau morceau le cerveau est déchiqueté par les synthés épais, pendant qu'une voix ferme parle lentement sur quelqu'un qui est née sur la piste de danse, si c'est métaphorique ou non – c'est à toi de voir. Alors avec des paroles cryptiques et des synthés qui cassent les oreilles, le son deformé coupe avec précision bien produit, je suis sûr que SUNSET va gagner certains fans cette année.
Onra – Gonna Make You Mine
Maintenant un autre parisien: c'est Onra. Si t'es français tu dois connaître Onra: c'est logique, non? Si non, découvre Onra – c'est un beatmaker né en Allemagne, qui a habité entre la France et la Côte d'Ivoire depuis l'âge de 3 ans, mais il a habité depuis 2000 à Paris. Euh, maintenant il a crée pour la compilation Saint Valentin de Colette (appelé «French Kisses»), la chanson funky «Gonna Make You Mine». Pas exactement le hip hop traditionnel – et plus comme la «future funk» adoptée par vaporwave – c'est plein de guitares punks éclatantes et la basse pulsative et renflée, avec des samples vocaux expressifs et des melodies synthés rosées luisantes. C'est parfait pour la Saint Valentin: doux, lisse, savoureux.
Aux Jennings – Need Me
Le rap canadien. Et alors? Euh, ben, c'est le rap canadien. Et ce rap notamment – de producteur/MC Aux Jennings – c'est cool, très cool, et il semble d'origine. Avec le hi-hat ombrageux cliquetant et la sub-bass de la grosse caisse lente, le rythme se balance, du lourd, pendant que des cordes synthés simplistes flottent dans l'air répercutant. C'est la perspective nouvelle, avec de la musique totalement pleine d'entrain. Tu peux télécharger gratuitement ce morceau, et aussi le nouvel album «MuckAFolly».
House Of Tapes – Last Words
Viens d'un nouvel EP, qui s'appel «Last Words» aussi, j'aime bien ce morceau par le japonais House Of Tapes. Ce n'est pas pour le club, c'est pour nul part en fait, en partie parce que ce n'est pas crée à cet effet, mais aussi car c'est bizarre. Ouais, c'est bizarre. Il a un son foncé mais affirmatif, évitant du genre et à la place examinant les sons pour la création d'une atmosphère pseudo-cauchemardesque d'un autre monde. Tout les sons répercutent, comme des bruits dans une caverne secrète; les guitares font cliquetis, avec leurs cordes conjurant le coucher de soleil. Alors, enfin, c'est expérimental, débordant de facticité fantomatique.
Ben c'est ça, ok? L'écrivant en français est de plus facile, mais encore ce n'est pas parfait ni correcte, probablement. Lis-toi ici la prochaine semaine pour quelques choses nouvelles écrit par moi. Et merci encore pour l'assistance de Nicolas Barrois. Vive YES/NO. Ciao.
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