Over the past 15-18 months or so, I’ve written quite a bit about the Paris-based electronic music and production duo DBFC. Now as you may recall, the duo, comprised of Manchester, UK-born, Paris-based David Shaw and Paris-born and-based Dombrance, the duo emerged onto the French electronic music scene with the release of a handful of singles during 2015-2017 through renowned indie label Her Majesty’s Ship Records — including “Autonomic,”a track that channelled Kraftwerk’s “The Man Machine,” and Primal Scream‘s “Autobahn 66” — but with a trippy, hallucinogenic vibe.
Along with that, you’d also likely remember that the duo, building upon a growing national and international profile through that same batch of early singles, released their full-length debut Jenks earlier this year through Different Recordings/[PIAS] Recordings. Unsurprisingly, the album’s last two singles, “Sinner” and album title track “Jenks” further cemented the duo’s reputation for pairing slick, dance floor-friendly electronic production with live, organic instrumentation in a way that nods at the classic Manchester sound of Primal Scream, New Order and others but while possessing a larger, universal theme — that sweaty clubs, strobe light and a propulsive grove can indeed change your life for the better.
Jenks‘ latest single “The Ride” finds the band meshing the classic Manchester sound of singles like “Jenks” and “Sinner” with the tight motorik grooves of Kraftwerk and others; in fact, when I first heard “The Ride,” I immediately thought of Primal Scream’s “Autobahn 66” and The Chemical Brothers’ “Star Sitar” — but underneath the slick, dance floor friendly sound is a song, much like its predecessors, that comes from a series of extensive jam sessions, and as a result, it possesses a loose yet immediate “you were there in the studio” vibe. Of course, along with that the single echoes many of the themes on the album — in this case, a swooning romantic and unbridled sense of possibility, making it one of the more upbeat songs the duo has ever released.
The recently released visuals for “The Ride” employs a relatively simple concept — the members of DBFC performing the song in a small rehearsal room with their instruments and their electronic gear in front of a wild and dizzying array of colored strobe light, extreme close ups of the musicians performing their hearts out, and rapid fire cuts. And while capturing the immediacy of the song, the video’s directors MDS-HMS employ the colored lights to create a strong visual identity — “visualised here as a rainbow tornado.”
