As I said last time, there's a lot of funk going on here. Funk meets 21st century electro, they have an affair, they elope, they make music in urban disco landscapes. A lovely mix of big-lunged, soulful vocals, slappy bass and zingy synth, all rolled into a spring roll of lurid night time colours and the vague promises that come with them. In a word: lovely.
I continue my obsession with the voice otherwise known as Jaw with another track that's been recommended to me by Teki Latex. It's a song by Claude VonStroke, (real name Barclay Crenshaw, hailing from San Fransisco, USA) called 'Le Fantôme'. It sure is a big tune.
Claude VonStroke himself is a pretty extensively known for his music. He's "headlined almost every major club, festival and basement after-party in the world," so I can safely say that this guy knows what works when it comes to music designed to make you dance. This song, featuring the vocal gems of Jaw, is absolutely no exception.
'Le Fantôme' indeed does have all the trappings of a toe-tapping, feet-moving wonder. And that's what it is really. Starting off with this beefy techno kick that ignites the beat and fires the rest of the song into life, the path ahead is a laid-back and funky minimalist house-style furore all the way to the end of the track. For example, the build-up at 4:40 and the nonchalant dropping back in of the beat at 5:10 is such a brilliantly thought-through moment.
The organ-style synths that get louder and louder as the song progresses, and the whispers every now and again, reflect the slightly sinister atmosphere floating above it like a dusty ghost - but a dusty ghost who not only likes to but also knows how to dance. He's doing a two-step now, can you see?
That selfsame spooky (Ghostbusters-style) atmosphere is bolstered by the splendid vocals of Jaw, which I could really listen to all day and and night. He sings about being your worst nightmare / your best dream / behind the mirror / when you scream - at least I think that's what it sounds like. He also declares about a third of the way through: I'm a ghost. The effect on the vocals does well to make them sound as wobbly and warbling as possible without losing the meaning. This is what I imagine ghosts to sound like, to be honest.
So it's very spooky. But with such an affable bassline, it couldn't be any spookier than spooky. Kind of like a techno house response to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. Spookstep.
If you read my post covering Para One yesterday, you will know that I was agonising over who did the vocals for the wonderful song 'When The Night'. We knew the name, Jaw, but we knew nothing else. It was a mystery. A big old mystery.
But then I got a tweet from Teki Latex, a Paris-based electro/hip-hop artist, who told me that Jaw is part of a group called dOP.
That's them, just in the top right of this post. You can see that they are "a dynamic trio of musicians, combining live instruments, vocals and electronics as if it was the simplest thing in the world" (thanks, EB). Or maybe you can't see that. But they just are.
So in the spirit of finding new music to enjoy, and without further ado, here is my chosen song from their SoundCloud, called 'The Hype'. With its stand-out mean-ass beat that exudes pure bass and modified vocals from who I can only assume is this mysterious Jaw, the track is well-tuned in the direction of being one thing: a deep-house treasure trove.
It's intense and heavy, kind of like carrying a cloud full of rain that keeps thundering and flashing like a crazy storm across a field that is not a field at all but a dancefloor with multicoloured glowing tiles. And in fact it may be like the kind of heavy when you carry a watermelon like Baby in Dirty Dancing.
And I really have to share another song. It's called 'Talk Show' and it goes a little something like this...
It's like film noir meets jazz and they start tangoing around a room filled with smoke that smells of pure dance sensibilities. This is where the skill as instrumentalists come in. It's sometimes not just about being able to manipulate sound via analogue or digital means. Sometimes it's about playing some instruments and bringing a super retro sound to what is really a modern world. It's a playground of real sounds that slide easily into the ear like a person going down a water slide into a filled with brilliant turquoise water. That easily.
It's funny that Annie Mac has shared this wonderful song by French producer Para One, aka Jean-Baptiste de Laubier, because it was last night on Annie Mac's show that I first heard some music by the man himself. There he is, on the right, with the glasses.
That particular song was called 'When The Night' and features vocals from an enigmatic singer known only as Jaw, about whom I can find absolutely nothing written. Does anybody know who this guy is? Who is Jaw? What is Jaw? Is it possible to ever truly know Jaw?
Either way, he's done a veritable number on Para One's track. 'When The Night' is a blissful glitchfest of electro house interweaved with heady doses of life-affirming funk and soul. Favourite lyric: My name is Whatever... My name is Whatever +1. Great stuff. It sounds like a James Brown / Mr Oizo hybrid. Listen below.
It's full of summery vibes and that's what we like. Especially with the sun finally back from the menders and working properly, it's time this song was pouring out from car windows like both flavours of Slush Puppy and onto the roads and pavements where everyone would swim in it like fish-turned-human-turned-fish-again.
The song of this post, however, is a little different. Called 'You', it's quite different to 'When The Night', and in fact is just a little taster of how juicily versatile Para One's new album Passion really is. There's definitely an element of garage here, namely in the beat, which creates the foundation for the entire song: fast-paced, euphoric, urban, and completely electro'd to the max. That garage beat is the song's hook, really, and something that is currently making me listen to it a million times in a row. The vocal samples are fun, offbeat and funky, mixing with the frenetic synths whizzing around as if the track were really a boiling pot of joyful dancing molecular structures. Or little atoms at a party.
Wonderful. You can download the track now. I know you want to.
But I've also found the video. It was directed by a couple of members of Club Cheval (Panteros666 and Myd, to be exact), a Parisian quartet of electro fun who are pretty big at the moment - or in other words, le groupe parisien en plein boom actuellement. Enjoy!
