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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hmm… you know those days that just seem to float like a nothing-mist, yet zip hastily to their own sunsets? Today is one of those days, and before I've even finished one cup of coffee it seems as though hours have passed by without my noticing their disappearance. Deary deary me. Anyway, we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about music. And in particular, we're here to talk about Onra.
Who is Onra? A maker of music of Vietnamese descent who lives in Paris; is that specific enough for you? I wrote about him before, when he created an awesomely slowdown-dreamy remix of Disclosure's 'F For You'. Only checking out his stuff when it appears in front of me, rather than actively seeking it out, I'm surprised that I don't indeed search it out – cause it's real nice yo. This time around we have a tasty little number from a compilation by "brick-and-click" clothing-etc. store Colette called French Kisses; essentially it's a Valentine's Day compilation. 'Gonna Make You Mine' – a romantic title, of course – is Onra's offering to this compilation.
Fading into your mind with a future funk feel – carried by a beat with plunging kicks, crashing snare, skiffly rush of hi-hats – the song is an instant body-mover. At least, for me it is. Maybe I'm just impressionable. But with that bass, bulging and pulsing along with the accented bass drum, it's difficult not to be dragged onto the virtual dancefloor. Minimalist funk chords in popping palm-mutedness whistle by, with occasional saxophone aching into the mix with supreme nocturnal romance flavours — cut-up vocal samples seem to be set to flanger, sounding like a synchronised crowd of voices. That's before the vocal samples proper come in (after a break with sharp-sharp cymbals), singing soulfully with reverb added, dew-dropped with glistens of icy synth.
It's a heavenly sound that takes the "piracy" of hip hop and sets it to work in a less brutal way, preserving sounds and snippets in order to build a neo-soulfunk track, rather than cutting sounds to insert above an equally cut-up beat; this – and some other recent tracks of Onra – suggest that this musicmaker, usually associated with hip hop, is taking a swerving towards something different. Not necessarily something new – just look at the vaporwave pirate-punks and Keats Collective's future funk, for instance – but certainly something full of life and worthy of a larger audience. Also, it just so happens to be a perfect sound for a Valentine's Day compilation: smooth, dance-inducing, flavourful.
Well, here's something exciting. Music can be fun, lighthearted, addictive, and it can also be exciting. And in this instance, I mean exciting in the way that something epic is exciting. Because this song right here just effuses "epic" – but before we get too much into it. Who or what the hell is SUNSET and why should you care? That's what you're thinking right? Right? Anyway, SUNSET is a duo from Paris, made up of artist Raphaël Siboni and Franck Rivoire (aka Danger). Not much is known about them, but it's that intrigue that keeps people guessing and, in a roundabout way, interested in the music. That's kind of beside the point though, because the music itself works just fine without any intrigue at all (check out their previous song 'Krystal'). Aren't I just contradicting myself… Sorry.
As for the song. It's called 'Ava' and it reaches you in the form of a lyric video; usually badly animated fan-created items, instead SUNSET have created it themselves and literally just provided the lyrics, in small writing, at the bottom of a black screen. And it's a good thing too because I don't speak very good French so understanding the lyrics is a little difficult (not that they matter 100%). Since they're given, it's interesting to note that the lyrics are wildly original, featuring the fictional account of someone's – this Ava perhaps – birthday at a club, where they were born to a techno song on the dancefloor. Bizarre? Yes, but totally captivating in a way. These, I believe, come from the artistic mind of Raphaël Siboni.
On the other hand, we have the music itself. The stoical nature of the spoken-word vocals, in its low register, is drowned by the track's hefty truckload of synth. We have it in lighter, more airy forms, where higher notes criss-cross like icicles in a glitter of reverb; then we have it in almost suffocating, heavy bass crunch form, a dark tooth-grinding saw-wave collapsing your mind and giving it away to the pulse of the song. The drums, booming along in a slow motion ache, almost cripple your ears – the kick in particular nearly escapes the speaker to scoop out your skull. It's a massive sound, wholly entrenched in the mystic, Crystal-Castles-esque side to trance music, yet with a sensibility towards live sound that comes with the high-end production, the distortion being paradoxically cut with precision. What will come next from these guys? It will be interesting to find out; pairing cryptic poem-like lyrics with such a sound is something that will turn a few heads, I'm sure, whilst also breaking some ears with their menacing sound.
Oh and if you're wondering about the "1789" at the end of the video: it's the start of the French Revolution and also the name of Franck Rivoire's label.
A crazy thing happened the other day. It might not seem so crazy to some people, but to me it was insanely crazy. I felt bizarre about the whole thing. But once I'd done it, everything felt fine. What was it, you ask? Did I lose my virginity? Did I die and come back to life? Did I get a sex change? No. None of those three things.
What happened? I was interviewed. Yeah, me. At first I didn't think it was for me. But it was. Nico Prat, journalist and host of Popcorn Sur Le Mouv, an weekday evening show about music and pop culture on French radio station Le Mouv, invited me for an interview on Tuesday 19th November. It was on the radio, I had to talk out loud (luckily not in French cause I'm not as proficient as I'd like to be - is anybody?) but despite my fears of talking out loud - especially considering this was a live broadcast - I think I did pretty well. My family said so. But then again, they're supposed to say that.
I haven't listened to the interview yet. I've downloaded the podcast, so I have forever the data that contains me being interviewed on radio, even if I won't listen to it for a while. However, if you would like to download it (free-of-charge) and have a listen to some of the tunes they play on Popcorn Sur Le Mouv and/or listen to me say some words about my site and what kinda stuff I'm into at the moment, then please feel free. You'll find it here: lemouv.fr/diffusion-echolove-un-amour-de-decouverte.
I would like to thank Mr Nico Prat for following YES/NO and sharing a selection of my music taste to a wider audience. And thank you, whoever you are that's reading this, for reading YES/NO. I would like to continue on this journey of finding and writing about new music from all directions and if you want to come along for the ride there's a lot of room. Please feel free to get in touch for whatever reason, especially if you are an artist or band looking for someone to have a listen of your music. I would like to hear it.
This is a cool surprise. If you liked the original Disclosure song 'F For You', especially if you liked it for its housey, garagey flavours, then you may not necessarily like this unofficial remix by Paris-based man of hip hop, Onra. Not only is it a completely different speed, but it has a completely different feel. Some will like it, some will not.
I like it though. It's really cool to hear a song so huge get this kind of treatment is very nice indeed. I liked Disclosure's original, but it wasn't my favourite track of theirs, nope not at all. I think in this instance, Onra has given this song such a makeover that it can never return, at least in my eyes, to being that original song. I basically prefer this version.
If you've heard of Onra before, good for you, you're really clever at music; if you haven't, then... well I was going to write his biography out and then I realised that, well, Wikipedia has done it just fine already. Anyway. Now it's time to listen, so do it.
Onra gives it a retro feel, glints of metallic sound shine throughout, with a chord progression in the glistening synth that breathes an organic spirit into the track. Before, 'F For You' was clinically produced - in this remix, there is an earthiness to it that cannot be denied. A super slo-down hip hop beat and waves of mean, pulsing bass underpin these major changes to the fabric of this song; above, it's decorated with a nearly indiscernible tinkling of bells. All these throwback sounds give a charming appeal to the remix, whilst keeping the original hook of the original preserved like something in an echo tunnel. Laid-back and nicely chilled.
Here is some quite dancey stuff to get dancey to, should you ever want to get dancey. Sometimes it's nice to get dancey; other times, it's nicer to chill out. Since I can hardly judge the mood of each and every person who reads this (wish I could) it is hit and miss whether you are going to like it at the time. Timing is a big part of finding a new song to like. Find it in the wrong mood and you might not like it. Your tastes are more fickle than you think.
So anyway, I was messaged on Facebook with this the other day. A song called 'Four On The Floor' by a French duo from Dijon called II. - that's their shortened name anyway: sometimes it's Un Et Un Font Deux (One And One Makes Two).
As a song, it reeks with attitude as soon as you click the play button. The synth stabs that you're presented with from the very start are telling of what is soon to come. I love that kind of synth sound though, cut-off, chopped, brimming with treble - like an instrument from the future. That sound comes to characterise the rest of the song as it's put on delay and muffled by turns.
The song is an uncomplicated house song with guts, that much is for sure. About halfway through the beat subsides and all that's left is this metallic bass zooming around - sounds great. The beat features a plosive kick and claps, snare fills and tambourine shakes, and moves a little faster than your average house song. A female vocal of "yeah... ahh" - chopped-up of course - gives it a sultry, soft human edge.
All in all, yes. I like it. A nice sound that encompasses the slightly poppish side of dance music, dark and disco-like. It appeared on New's Lighters Records first compilation We Re-Created Disco, showcasing a number of talented alternative electronic dance acts.
