Category: electronica

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Carré Share Uneasy and Lysergic “Brothers”

Over the past couple of years, I managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering Los Angeles-based indie electro rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Carré, an act that features:

  • Julien Boyé (drums, percussion, vocals): Boyé has had stints as a touring member of Nouvelle Vague and James Supercave. Additionally, he has a solo recording act Acoustic Resistance, in which he employs rare instruments, which he has collected from all over the world.

  • Jules de Gasperis (drums, vocals, synths, production and mixing): de Gasperis is a Paris-born, Los Angeles-based studio owner. Growing up in Paris, he sharpened his knowledge of synthesizers, looping machines and other electronics around the same time that Justice, Soulwax and Ed Banger Records exploded into the mainstream.

  • Kevin Baudouin (guitar, vocals, synth, production): Baudouin has lived in Los Angeles the longest of the trio — 10 years — and he has played with a number of psych rock acts, developing a uniquely edgy approach to guitar, influenced by Nels Cline, Jonny Greenwood and Marc Ribot.

Deriving their name for the French word for “square,” “playing tight” and “on point,” the Los Angeles-based trio formed back in 2019 — and as the band’s Jules de Gasperis explains in press notes, “The making of our band started with this whole idea of having two drummers perform together. It felt like a statement. We always wanted to keep people moving and tend to focus on the beats first when we write.”

Carrè fittingly specializes in a French electronica-inspired sound that frequently blends aggressive, dark and chaotic elements with hypnotic drum loops. And thematically, their work generally touches upon conception, abstraction and distortion of reality through a surrealistic outlook of our world.

2020’s attention-grabbing self-titled EP featured:

Since the release of their debut EP, the members of Carré have shared remixes of material off their self-titled EP. But earlier this month, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstays released “Brothers,” their first single of 2022. Centered around a dense and woozy production featuring copious amounts of cowbell, buzzing guitars, layered arpeggiated synths, industrial clang and clatter, thumping and propulsive four-on-the-floor, the expansive “Brothers” is a slick synthesis of Pink Floyd‘s “On The Run,” Kraftwerk, Nine Inch Nails, and LCD Soundsystem that’s arguably the act’s trippiest and most dance floor friendly track of their growing catalog.

The band explains that the track “is a surrealistic allegory on climate change and human relationships with Mother Earth.”

The accompanying video was made by San Diego-based artist Jerry Scott Lopez and is an uneasy and lysergic nightmare featuring stop motion animation vaguely inspired by Darron Anrofski’s Mother.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Lee Paradise Teams Up with New Chance’s Victoria Cheong on a Woozy Banger

Although best known for being one-half of Toronto-based indie electro pop duo Phédre, Dan Lee is also a solo artist in his own right, under the moniker Lee Paradise. And with the release of his Lee Paradise debut, 2020’s The Fink, Lee quickly established a sound that’s typically widescreen and is indebted to polyrhythmic psychedelia.

Lee’s sophomore Lee Paradise album Lee Paradise & Co. is slated for an October 28, 2022 release through Telephone Explosion Records. The album’s material started off as a set of mood-focused instrumental sketches. But the sketches became fleshed out songs after he sent the tracks to a an eclectic array of collaborators including Jane Inc.‘s Carlyn Bezic, Scott Hardware’s, No Frills‘ and Ducks Ltd.‘s Jonathan Pappo, Scott Hardware, Isla Craig, New Chance‘s Victoria Cheong, Jay Anderson, Mother Tongues‘ Charise Aragoza and Lukas Cheung and Moon King‘s Daniel Woodhead. The end result is an album in which every aspect of its creation eventually became open to collaboration, from musical performances, lyric writing and vocals all the way through to mixing and mastering, all while featuring material that defies genre and style conventions with a soulful panache.

“Not Practical,” Lee Paradise & Co.‘s latest single is a woozy yet accessible synth pop-leaning banger centered around copious amounts of DFA Records/LCD Soundsystem-like cowbell, layers of glistening and whirring synths and skittering beats paired with Victoria Cheong’s beguiling vocal. While being remarkably dance floor friendly, “Not Practical” evokes the swooning and wildly illogical of love.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Cuarto Mundo Shares a Woozy, Club Friendly Banger

Deriving their name from a phrase that translates into English as “Fourth World,” an outdated term coined to describe the various groups of the planet’s indigenous people, French electronic duo Cuarto Mundo features:

  • Thomas Lavernhe, a French-born and-based musician, who has a lengthy career playing in a number of different bands and solo projects.
  • Chilean-born, French-based DJ Cosmo Gonik, who once toured with acclaimed outfit Arcade Fire.

Cuarto Mundo sees Lavernhe and Gonik drawing from traditional sounds and styles across the world to shape a mind-bending journey to music’s mysterious — and perhaps mystical roots.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you may recall that I’ve written about two previously released Cuarto Mundo singles:

  • “Sabi Lulu,” a slickly produced and mischievously anachronistic track that features electronic production centered around skittering beats and glistening synths paired with a traditional, percussive melody from West Java, Indonesia, written by Mang Koko. 
  • “La Cumbia Del Tarot” is a slow-burning bit of psychedelic cumbia featuring traditional cumbia instrumentation, shuffling rhythms, wobbling and twinkling synth arpeggios. Written as a tribute to Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s The Holy Mountain, the track features a guest spot from the famed director’s son, Adan Jodorowsky, who contributes vocals. The end result is a meditative and trippy synthesis of the ancient and the modern.

The duo’s latest single “La Psycho Cumbia Del Tarot” is an expansive and woozy reworking (of sorts) of the aforementioned “La Cumbia Del Tarot” that retains elements of the original: shuffling rhythms, looping guitar lines thumping beats and twinkling synths in the song’s slow-burning intro and outro. The song’s middle section is club rocking and trippy bit of house centered around percussive polyrhythm, oscillating synths, sampled horn and skittering beats. All three parts are held together by Adan Jodorowsky’s sonorous baritone and cumbia rhythm. While continuing to be a synthesis of the folkloric and contemporary, “La Psycho Cumbia Del Tarot” may arguably be the most dance floor friendly song the French duo has released to date.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French Producer Poltergeist Shares a New Club Friendly Banger

Poltergeist is a young, mysterious French producer, who quickly emerged into the French electronic and industrial scenes with his debut single “Ich bin ein Kämpfer.”

The emerging French producers full-length debut is slated for release next month — and to build buzz for it, he recently released the album’s second and incredibly trance-inducing single “La Grand Dame.” Centered around tweeter and woofer rocking thump, oscillating synths and wobbling synth arpeggios pared with the French producer’s insouciant delivery and a forceful motorik groove.

While sounding a bit like Depeche Mode — or a goth take on Kraftwerk, the song thematically is about a deep, existential terror — the terror of humanity being punished for having betrayed and mistreated Mother Nature.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Quentin Salomon is a French saxophonist, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the emerging solo recording project Human Pattern. Solomon can trace the origins of Human Pattern back to 2016: While on a trip to Berlin, Salomon fell in love with German minimalist techno. He challenged himself to replicate the songs and textures of samplers and synthesizers solely with the saxophone.

While living in Annecy, France, he quickly earned the support of local concert hall and rehearsal studio Le Brise Glace and Feeling and Sound Production, and eventually was signed by indie label Alpine Records. He released his debut EP Rebirth to critical praise from Tsugi Magazine and the local press — and he supported the effort with opening slots for Black Strobe‘s Arnaud Rebotini, Acid Arab, and Cyril Atef.

In 2019, he moved to Villeurbanne, France to share his vision of electronic music with saxophone with the Lyon electronic music scene, to further Human Pattern — and to explore other musical horizons.

His latest single “Stress” off his recently released Animal Instinct EP is a club banger featuring skittering hi-hat and thumping beats, looped and chopped up saxophone bleats and squeaks for the song’s infectious hook paired with a modal saxophone melody. Mixing organic instrumentation and arrangements with electronic production isn’t exactly a new thing — but it adds a human element to the proceedings: It’s a reminder that a living, breathing, feeling human created the song.

Salomon explains that the EP is inspired by and informed by human evolution, and the fact that we have gradually lost connection with our animal instincts. He goes on to say that “Stress” is informed by the emotions and emotional responses we’ve inherited as part of our survival instinct.

Electro Pop by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 75th Birthday, Florian Schneider!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 75h anniversary of the birth of Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: H2SO4 Return with a Strutting and Funky Bop

Formed in Kent back in the late 90s, British electro pop act H2S04 — Graham Cupples (keys, programming), Darren Till (keys, programming) and James Butler (vocals, bass) — features a collection of accomplished musicians: Cupples previously led techno acts Mortal and Code. Till played with Cupples in Code. Butler contributed bass and vocals in indie rock act Lobster, which was once known as Sulpher. 

Initially tracing their origins back to when they started experimenting with a series of remixes, the members of H2S04 began writing original material that blended electronica, rock and techno paired with a special attention to songwriting. Their debut single, 1998’s “Little Soul,” quickly became popular in their native England — and because of its extremely limited release, a collector’s item.

The trio’s 1999 full-length debut Machine Turned Blues featured the aforementioned “Little Soul,” “I Need Feel,” “The Way I Want,” and “Imitation Leather Jacket,” a track that was a favorite among British DJs that also received radio play here in the States. They supported Machine Turned Blues by playing a series of festivals across the British festival circuit, including Glastonbury — and they played shows in Canada and Chicago.

2000’s Glamtronica saw the British trio further establishing their sound while adding a playful sense of satire to the mix. The act largely disappeared until 2015’s Under Control and 2021’s Love and Death. 

The British trio started off the year with “Fast Cars,” a swaggering Brit Pop meets Big Beat banger that sonically nodded at the likes of Kasabian, The Chemical Brothers and Evil Heat era Primal Scream — and meant to be played as loudly as possible.

“Best Shot” the trio’s latest single is strutting bop centered around fluttering and glistening synths, a funky bass line, bursts of funk guitar, congo accents and Butler’s insouciant cooed delivery paired with an infectious hook. Sonically, the track nods at Electronic‘s “Getting Away With It” and The Chemical Brothers “Come With Us” but with a chilled out, lounge/salon friendly vibe.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: H2S04 Shares a Swaggering and Anthemic New Banger

Formed in Kent back in the late 90s, British electro pop act H2S04 — Graham Cupples (keys, programming), Darren Till (keys, programming) and James Butler (vocals, bass) — features a collection of accomplished musicians: Cupples previously led techno acts Mortal and Code. Till played with Cupples in Code. Butler contributed bass and vocals in indie rock act Lobster, which was once known as Sulpher.

Initially tracing their origins back to when they started experimenting with a series of remixes, the members of H2S04 began writing original material that blended electronica, rock and techno paired with a special attention to songwriting. Their debut single, 1998’s “Little Soul,” which featured a foreboding song, quickly became popular in English — and because of its extremely limited release, a collector’s item.

The British trio’s 1999 full-length debut Machine Turned Blues featured the aforementioned “Little Soul,” “I Need Feel,” “The Way I Want,” and “Imitation Leather Jacket,” a track that was a favorite among British DJs, while receiving radio play here in the States. The trio supported Machine Turned Blues by playing a series of festivals across the British festival circuit, including Glastonbury — and they played shows in Canada and Chicago.

2000’s Glamtronica saw the British trio further establishing their sound while adding a playful sense of satire to the mix. The act largely disappeared until 2015’s Under Control and 2021’s Love and Death.

“Fast Cars” H2S04’s first single of 2022 is centered around skittering tweeter and woofer ratting thump, buzzing synths, crooned vocals, relentless motorik groove and enormous, arena rock friendly hooks paired with a swaggering air. The end result is a song that sonically nods at Kasabian, The Chemical Brothers and Evil Heat era Primal Scream meant to be played as loud as humanly possible.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Neon Jesus’ Sultry and Bluesy Banger “Red Lips”

Rising Canadian-born and-based singer/songwriter Neon Jesus can trace the origins of his genre-defying sound — a sound that pairs blues-inspired guitar with pulsing electronic dance music — to when he lived in New York.

While in New York, the rising Canadian artist frequently caught live music, and he noticed a significant and very telling difference in terms of reaction: “I’d be out at a rock show and while people were attentive and taking everything in, the crowd’s reaction was rather lackluster, even amid great artists before them,” Neon Jesus recalls. ““But then I’d head to a rave in Brooklyn and it struck me that people there were uninhibited and just generally more invested in what they were listening to. That was when I started to wonder what would happen if someone were to bring the two genres together.”

Electronic music was uncharted territory for the rising Canadian artist. But rather than mindlessly following the short-lived trends of generic dance music, Neon Jesus invested time to understand the foundations of electronic music and began to create his own beats to accompany his own guitar playing. That approach to production caught the attention of New York-based dance music production Abe Duque, a pioneer of deep house.

Mentored by Duque, Neon Jesus was exposed to underground dance music. Together, they created a live sound featuring synths and drum machines while the Canadian artist played guitar that saw the pair playing off one-another in an improvised manner familiar to the blues and jazz. The pair took their live sound to Berlin, where Neon Jesus became the first artist to play electric guitar at the renowned Berlin-based techno club Berghain.

Interestingly, those performances laid the foundation for Neon Jesus’ forthcoming full-length debut Tabula Rosa. Tabula Rosa‘s first single, the slickly produced and sultry “Red Lips” is centered around a thumping kick drum, glistening and pulsating synths, the Canadian artist’s plaintive wailing and scorching guitar lines reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix, Prince and the like. And while pairing bluesy, power chord-driven rock with pulsating electronic dance music, “Red Lips” sonically and thematically reminds me a bit of INXS‘ “Need You Tonight” as the song is about desperate, maddening, obsessive desire — but with a sinister and uneasy undertone. “When you look back at artists like Prince or Jimi Hendrix, the blues was at the heart of their sound,” he declares. For some, this may seem a bit odd. The blues label doesn’t easily stick to them. Rather than mimic what came before them, they took the soul of blues and roots music and grew their own branches from the same tree. That’s the impetus behind my exploration of mixing blues and rock guitar with electronic music. I’m growing my personal branch on that tree.”

The recently released video was shot on grainy Super 8 film and is split between footage of the Canadian artist rocking out in a dark club, a beautiful blonde in knee high boots strutting around NYC. “With the video, we were trying to capture the sensation where love slips into obsession followed by a sudden darkness, where only the Lord can save you from its clutches,” Neon Jesus says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: FUTURE KULT Delves Deep into our Near-Dystopian Future

FUTURE KULT is a emerging music project featuring Cardiff-based film composer Sion Trefor and Berlin-based musician and art producer Benjamin Zombori. The duo holed up in the remote Mexican region of Hildalgo to write and record their forthcoming self-titled, full-length debut, slated for a February 11, 2022 releaser through AWAL.

The duo’s work fed off what they’ve been seeing in the overall zeitgeist — an uneasy and mad world in conflict, with technology consuming the life and soul of the consumer. Thematically, the album sees the duo questioning what it even means to create art in this particular moment. Has the world accepted the all-consuming algorithm as ruler — or is it possible to make music and art that reflects and comments on our moment?

For the duo, to be human means to be engaged in a battle of retreat against overwhelming technological forces, with the soft-power of our machines hardening into a prison for our minds. They claim that it’s not long clear if humans shape their computers, phones, their avatars and the internet — or if these devices shape us, our desires, our thoughts and our expression.

FUTURE KULT’s first single “Hildago” is an expansive track that’s simultaneously cinematic and menacing, centered around a noisy and dense arrangement featuring buzzing bass synths, skittering boom bap, scorching guitar, brooding horn blasts, layers of glistening synth arpeggios, distorted vocal samples paired with breathy yet ironically detached vocals. This is the sound of our near dystopian present.

The accompanying video was shot by Zombori in the Mexican desert, just outside of its namesake town. The video shows fragments of a mysterious folk tale centered around a masked hero, who mysteriously arrives to protect the villagers from dark and unseen forces seemingly recorded on a battered VHS tape.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Allegories Releases a Left Field Banger

Allegories was a long-dormant experimental noise duo that reappeared in 2014 as an electro pop unit that experimented with genre, meshing eclectic soundscapes with pop inclinations. Gathering further, inspiration from DJ’ing house and hip-hop nights, the act began to create electronic music that often shifts between the mainstream and underground spectrum.

The duo’s latest single “Pray” is a feverish left field take on dance music, centered around `shimmering synth arpeggios, thumping beats, euphoria-inducing hooks and pitch shifted vocals that sonically is a slick synthesis of Evil Heat era Primal Scream and Sound of Silver era LCD Soundsystem. Or in other words, it’s a bizarre yet winning mix of menace, irony and sincerity within a club banger.

“‘Pray’ feels like a tree grown out of a seed of house music, but its leaves are wild and varied,” the mysterious duo explain. “Sometimes you let gravity take over a composition; you start one way but over time music evolves naturally. At the same time, “Pray” doesn’t function in an uncomplicated fashion. It was written and recorded over many years and each new iteration added conflicting emotional layers. A menagerie of feelings. Owing as much to the overtly sincere as it does the misleading insincere. “

electronica by William Ruben Helms

Deriving their name from the tittle of 1993’s “Chemical Beats,” a single which helped establish their sound, the acclaimed Manchester UK-based electronic duo The Chemical Brothers — Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons — can trace their origins back to 1989, when they initially formed as The Dust Brothers. And although they were forced to change their name `in 1995, when they discovered that another act existed with the same name, the Manchester-based electronic duo are considered pioneers of big beat electronica, along with The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim and The Crystal Method.

The British duo’s debut, 1995’s Exit Planet Dust, which features the aforementioned “Chemical Beats” went on to sell over a million copies globally. They caught the attention of Virgin Records, who signed the act and released their sophomore album, Dig Your Own Hole, which topped the UK charts. In their native England, the duo have six #1 albums, 13 Top 20 singles — and two #1 hits.

Here in the States, the duo have won six Grammy Awards including Best Rock Instrumental Performance, Best Dance Recording and Best Dance/Electronic Album of the Year, which they’ve won three times in the category’s Grammy history, including as recently as 2020.

With the forced hiatus in touring, the acclaimed Manchester- based duo have managed to remain busy: they have their own Sonos Radio HD station Radio Chemical. The station features some mixtapes that the pair have expertly and loving curated, including their latest “Early Rap and Beyond Mix.” (The mix is available both on Sonos Radio and Mixcloud, which allows anyone to listen to it.)

“In this ‘Early Rap and Beyond” mix we celebrate the moments disco met rap. All mixed from the original 12” records we take you all around the 5 boroughs whilst also finding the space to throw down some other essential b boy curveballs,” the duo explain.

Featuring some deep crate digging obscurities for even the most ardent hip-hop head, like Super 3’s “When You’re Standing on Top of the World,” Pied Piper of Funkingham’s “Clap Song,” Sweaty G’s “We Want to Get Down” and a lengthy list of others (which you can see below), the mix captures a unique moment in the beloved genre’s history: it’s pioneering first decade or so, when it was brand new, and still centered around local block parties. And as a result, each song is a dance floor banger, built around the big breakbeats meant to get the b-boys and b-girls off the wall, and popping and locking.

Playlist:

Super 3 – “When You’re Standing on Top of the World”

Count Coolout- “Here to Stay” (Instrumental)

Sugar Baby Weet – “Ah Bam Bam Just Jam”

Fantasy 3 – “It’s Your Rock”

TJ Swann – “Get Fly”

Jackson 2 – “Oh Yeah”

2001 Kazoos “Mr. Magic”

Harlem World Crew -“Let’s Rock”

TJ Swann – “Maximus Party”

Sweaty G – “We Want To Get Down”

Grandmaster Chilly T- “Rock The Message Rap”

Time Zone – “Wild Style”

The Chemical Brothers – “Go”

The Last Poets – “Mean Machine Chant”

Can – “Vitamin C”

Take Two – “The People’s Message”

Pied Piper of Funkingham – “Clap Song”

Xanadu – “Sure Shot”


Stack – “Win Jesse Win”

Troy Rainey “Trouble Tee Rap”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay LutchamaK Releases a Dubby and Hypnotic Banger

There are few artists I’ve written about as much over the past 20+ months than the frenetically prolific French electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay LutchamaK. During that period, LutchamaK has managed to release an increasingly eclectic array of material — through EPs, albums and standalone singles — that have seen him bouncing around effortlessly between a number of different electronic music styles, genres and sub-genres.

2021 may bee among the most prolific and productive of the JOVM mainstay’s career. He started the year with Pi, a full-length album written and recorded in at three-month inspired burst that resulted in some of the darkest and heaviest material, he has written and released to date. Then he released the Quest EP, an effort, which featured experimental yet very melodic material. A few months after that, he released Rapscallion, which featured the Radioactivity-era Kraftwerk meets 90s techno-like “James Blitz 007.” Then there was Seven Hybrids, which featured the hypnotic club banger “Moonbright,” and the  Larry Levan house music-like “Davai.”

After a mere month hiatus, the prolific, French JOVM mainstay released his latest full-length album Threshold. Threshold, as LutchamaK explains ” . . . an invitation to a post-techno trip with strong electro dub accents.” Album single “Irie Vibrations” may be the best example of what to expect of the album: Tweeter and woofer rattling beats are paired with shimmering, reverb-drenched synths and spacey vocal samples. The end result is a track that meshes elements of Lee “Scratch” Perry-like dub with club friendly trance and house.