Tag: Paris France

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ballaké Sissoko Teams up With Rising Gambian Kora Player Sona Jobarteh on a Meditative Single

Ballaké Sissoko is an acclaimed Malian-born, Paris-based kora player. who comes from a rather musical family: Sissoko is the son of equally acclaimed, kora master Djelimady Sissoko, who may be best known for his work with Ensemble Instrumental Du Mali. Drawn to the kora at a very young age, the younger Sissoko was taught the instrument by his father. Tragically,. Djelmady died while his children were very young — and Ballaké stepped up to take the on the role of breadwinner, eventually taking his father’s place in the Ensemble Instrumental Du Mali.

The younger Sissoko has had a long-held fascination with genres and sounds outside of scope of the Mandika people — i.e., flamenco guitar, sitar and others — which, inspired a series of critically applauded collaborations with a diverse and eclectic array of musicians across the globe, including acclaimed French cellist Vincent Segal, Toumani Diabaté, legendary bluesman Taj Mahal and Ludovic Einaudi.

Sissoko’s 11th album Djourou was originally scheduled for release this week — but its release has since been rescheduled for an April 19, 2021 release through his long-time label home Nø Førmat Records. The forthcoming album will feature solo compositions and a number of thoughtful collaborations with a collection of diverse and unexpected artists outside of the Mandinka musical genre for which his griot caste is celebrated globally, including Nouvelle Vague’s Camille, African legend Salif Keita, young, leading female kora player Sona Jobareth, the aforementioned Vincent Segal and Malian-born, French emcee Oxmo Puccino among others.

Interestingly, Djourou, which derives its name from the Bambara word for string, can trace its origins to when Sissoko approached Nø Førmat label head Laurent Bizot with the proposition of blending solo kora pieces with unexpected collaborations. The label and Sissoko mutually agreed that he take the time to confirm enriching and challenging partnership with artists, who were fans of Sissoko’s work. And as a result, the album has taken over two years to complete.

Late last year, I wrote about Djourou’s first single, the meditative and gorgeous “Frotter Les Mains,” which features acclaimed Malian-born, French-based emcee Oxmo Puccino. Deriving its title from the French phrase for “rub hands,” “Frotter Les Mains” is centered around the percussive element of Sissoko rubbing his hands, shimmering kora and Puccino’s dexterous and heady French lyrics. The end result is a song that’s simultaneously a much-needed bit of peace, thoughtfulness and kindness in a world that’s often batshit insane, a vital connection between the ancient and the modern, the West and Africa — and a reminder that hip hop has become the lingua franca that binds us all.

Djourou’s latest single, album title track “Djourou” is a mediative track that sees Sissoko collaborating with leading Gambian-born, female kora player Sona Jobarteh, centered around the duo trading shimming and expressive melodic bursts of kora paired with ethereal, interwoven vocals. Much like its immediate predecessor, the track finds its collaborators making a vital connection — this time across both contemporary African borders and across generations. Sissoko sought out Jobarteh with a specific wish to connect with the younger generation of kora players — to rejoin with their common forebears, to weave a connective thread across borders that were unknown and unimagined to the griots of the Malian Empire’s presence over much of West Africa.

“You grow up listening to somebody, and that’s the person that has in many ways been your teacher, your inspiration since a very young age,” Jobarteh says of her collaboration with the Malian-bor, Parisian-based kora master. “The first time I heard him, sounded so different to me, the tone that he gets out of the instrument is so different. He says something to me, the phrasing and the melody he picks – and he’s technically amazing, but he doesn’t let that become more than the music. That’s something I’ve always respected about him.”

Directed by Benoît Peverelli, the recently released video for “Djourou” features intimately shot footage of Sissoko and Jobarteh in the studio. The visual manages to convey the meditative peace of the song.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: France’s No Money Kids Release a Brooding New Single

No Money Kids — Félix Matschulat (vocals, guitar) and JM Pelatan (bass, synths, programming) — is a rising Paris-based blues rock act that quickly established a unique take on blues rock, which incorporates vintage gear with electronics and modern production. With their first live shows, the duo set themselves apart from their cohorts, but when Matschulat suffered a violent epileptic seizure and a broken shoulder while in the studio, his music career and the band’s future was in jeopardy: hospitalized for six months, there was the very real danger that Matschulat would never be able to play guitar.

After Matschulat finished a long and difficult rehabilitation, the members of No Money Kids felt an urgency desire to return to writing and recording music, as well as to playing live. The duo went on to furiously write their full-length debut, 2015’s I don’t trust you, a raw and spontaneous album, recorded, engineered, mixed and mastered in entirely DIY fashion by the band’s JM Pelatan — and released by Roy Music/Alter-K.

Matschulat went through a long and very difficult rehabilitation but once he was well, the duo felt an urgency to return to the stage. They went on to furiously write their debut album, 2015’s I don’t trust you, which was a raw, spontaneous album, recorded, engineered, mixed and mastered by the band’s JM Pelatan. Centered around characters on the fingers, the album touched upon beauty in pain, shadow in light and other related themes. Interestingly, around the same the band developed chiaroscuro imagery that went on to catch the attention the fashion word — in particular Schwarzkopf, Stylist, Glamour, Modzik — and led to the band working with international directors on music videos.

In 2016, the duo caught the attention of the high-end, ready to wear, “designated discovery” group of the Cotélac brand, who released a special-run 15,000 copy, free promotional EP distributed to over 110 stores in France and abroad. Adding to a growing platform, the band started playing shows internationally and won over music supervisors here in the States with their music making prominent appearances in a number of TV series including Banshee, Night Shift, Veep, Killjoys, Goliath, Dollar, Legacies, Servant and Shameless, as well as major motion pictures like Misconduct, Get The Girl and Baby, Baby, Baby.

After playing more than 100 shows, they wrote and recorded their sophomore album, 2017’s Hear the Silence and 2018’s Trouble, both of which were released to praise from Les Inrockuptibles, Rolling Stone, Le Monde, France Inter, France TV, FIP, Sourdoreille. With even more growing attention of them, the duo made the rounds of the national festival circuit with sets at Rock en Seine, Solidays and Art Rock.

Of course, much like countless acts across the globe, the band’s plans were put on hold as a result of the pandemic. And as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions the duo, who for most of their history wrote their material while on the road wore forced to change their creative process. The end result, the band’s third album Factory, which is slated for release later this year was written and recorded in the isolated atmosphere of an abandoned factory-turned recording studio. Thematically, the album is influenced by the overall sense of anxiety, uncertainty and doom of our current moment.

Factory’s latest single “Crossroad” is a brooding, late night blues stomp centered around skittering beats, slashing rhythm guitar, wailing, whiskey-fueled guitar work, industrial clang and clatter and Matschulat’s sultry cooing. Thanks to some healthy reverb, the instrumentation seems to sound as though it were bouncing off massive walls and ceilings in a way that recalls Chicago’s My Gold Mask while drawing some fair comparisons to a growing number of blues rock duos.

Interestingly, as the duo explain, the song’s title is derived from the mythical story of Robert Johnson meeting the Devil on the Crossroad, and selling his soul to the Devil, so that he could be the world’s best guitarist. And as the song points out, humanity itself is at a crossroad, and the decisions we make right now can impact us and future generations. What will we do? Will we do the things we need to protect our planet? We will see.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bruno Bisaro Releases a Brooding and Cinematic Single

Bruno Bisaro is a Paris-based singer/songwriter, poet, actor, playwright and multi-disciplinary artist, who has been deeply involved in France’s avant-garde theater, writing and music scenes over the past decade or so:

He received theater training at Blanche Salant’s and Paul Weaver’s International Theater Workshop.
Poet and friend Geneviève Pastre helped him publish his first book 2005’s L’intrépide.
Bisaro adapted one of his major poems “Octavia Or The Second Death of the Minotaur” to the theater.
In 2009, the French multidisciplinary artist performed at the Winter Shifts Festival and was handpicked by Didier Desmas for recognition in the festival’s avant-garde song category.
Bisaro had a role in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull — and he collaborated on a show dedicated to Marina Tsvetaïeva.
He also collaborated on two different projects — a new staging of Les Valises with actors Hélène Arié and Jean-François Chatillion and a multidisciplinary performance featuring music, poetry and theater based on Yves Navarre’s poems “Chants de tout et de rien” and “Chants de rien du tout” with Ines Hammache.

In 2013 Bisaro released his full-length debut Beaujeau. Last year, he released his long-awaited Julien Vonarb-produced sophomore album Bruno Bisaro & Les Ourgans Gris. The album is a concept album, a musical novel of sorts, which features traditional songs, originals, spoken word, sound poetry and protest theater among others, dedicated to Bisaro’s friend and producer, Alain Moisset, who was a member of French punk rock act Via Viva, as well as to other lost friends.

Interestingly, Bruno Bisaro & Les Ourgans Gris’ latest single is the brooding and atmospheric “Etranger à demeure.” Centered around acoustic guitar, twinkling piano, soaring strings and Bisaro’s dramatic, baritone crooning, the album’s latest single possesses a cinematic quality while reminding me quite a bit of Untitled #23-era The Church.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: TRZTN Teams Up with Karen O on a Glitchy and Futuristic Single and Visual

Tristan Bechet is an acclaimed Portuguese-born, Paris-based (by way of Brazil and NYC), singer/songwriter, composer, producer, sound designerr and electronic music artist, who has developed and honed an idiosyncratic approach to music and sound design through stints fronting industrial no wave act Flux Information Sciences electronic rock duo SERVICES and Sauna Kings and with his solo recording project TRZTN.

Bechet has composed pieces for an impressive and eclectic array of internationally renowned brands including Nike, Karl Lagerfeld, Dior, Chanel, Givenchy and The Creator’s Project — with some of his work being featured by The New York Times, Nowness and many others. The Portuguese-born, Paris-based composer, producer, singer/songwriter and electronic music artist is currently composing the score fo a psychological horror drama film.

Bechet’s latest TRZTN album, the recently released Royal Dagger Ballet is an edgy yet lush and mesmerizing compilation of genre-defying, experimental industrial tracks featuring guest spots from Jonathan Bree, Surfbort’s Dani Miller, Ize Teixeira, Estrael Boiso, Interpol’s Paul Banks, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O and countless others. Each individual track manages to inhabit its own different world — and that shouldn’t be surprising as some of the album’s songs are cinematic and melodic and others are more cacophonous and industrial.

Royal Dagger Ballet’s latest single “Hieroglyphs” is a slow-burning track centered around an eerie track that sonically seems to continuously disintegrate and reintegrate, as its centered around industrial clang and clatter, glitchy and chopped up vocal samples, buzzing bass synths, atmospheric and melodic synths — and it’s all held together by Karen O’s imitable and expressive vocals. “‘Hieroglyphs’ resembles an odd Lynchian dreamstate; bizarre and beautiful. A sonic portrait that warbles away into space dust,” Bechet explains in press notes.

Bechet and Karen O have been frequent collaborators throughout the years, including work together on the music for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are and the Rise of The Tomb Raider video game.The writing process behind “Hieroglyphs began after Bechet sent Karen O an initial sonic sketch, to which she quickly recorded her cosmic lyrics. “Without holding back, I embarked on a phantasmagorical way of production – sculpting sound more than composing conventionally. I recorded clangs and digital white noise. I re-shaped her voice, deformed the structure, and resampled her own vocals creating the main staccato vocal theme. The track disintegrates and falls back together like the push and pull of a rubber band stretching.”

Directed by Barnaby Roper, the recently released video for “Hieroglyphs” is a glitchy fever dream in which Victoria Dauberville, appearing as though she just ended a shift at an office job and walking into an empty parking garage to expressively dance — until she’s taken into a wildly different dimension.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Kevin Rodrigues is a Paris-born and-based electronic music artist, producer and DJ, best known in electronic music circles as Worakls. Rodrigues, who grew up in a musical family, started to learn the piano when he had turned three. After studying in a conservatory, he started to dedicate his time to electronic music and composition.

After receiving acclaim for his remixes and his earliest solo releases, Rodrigues along with his friends N’to and Joachim Pastor founded Hungry Music in 2014. Since the formation of Hungry Records, Rodrigues has been praised by Billboard, who referred to him as a “rising French DJ” and described his tracks as “serious techno with a light touch,” full of focused, nervous energy.”

In 2019, the rising French electronic music artist, DJ and producer released his full-length debut Orchestra. The label went on a brief hiatus — and they returned with a slew of releases including a series of remixes to celebrate the second anniversary of Orchestra‘s initial release.

Recently, Patrice Bäumel, an acclaimed East German-born, Amsterdam-based electronic music artist, DJ and producer remixed Orchestra album track “Detached Motion.” The remix finds Bäumel retaining the arpeggiated and gently morphing synths of the original, the East German-born, Dutch-based producer’s take feels cinematic and expansive, with the track slowly and continuously building up energy and tension paired with a muscular and insistent thump and euphoric hooks. Sonically, the song — to my ears, at least — is a seamless synthesis of Tour de France-era Kraftwerk and deep house, imbued with a cosmic sheen.

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Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: L’Impératice Releases a Campy and Defiantly Feminist Visual for Strutting Disco Anthem “Peur des filles”

L’Impératice — founder Charles de Boisseguin (keys), Hagni Gown (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), Tom Daveau (drums) and Flore Benguigui (vocals) — is a Paris-based electro pop sextet that formed back in 2012. And since their formation the Parisian electro pop act has been extraordinarily busy: they released their self-titled, full-length debut in 2012. their sophomore EP Sonate Pacifique in 2014 and their third EP Odyssée in 2015.

In 2016, the French electro pop act released a re-edited, remixed and slowed down version of Odyssée, L’Empreruer, which was inspired by a fan mistakenly playing a vinyl copy of Odyssée at the wrong speed. L’Impératice followed that up with a version of Odysseé featuring arrangements centered around violin, cello and acoustic guitar.

During the summer of 2017, the members of L’Impératice signed to microqlima Records, who released that year’s Séquences EP. They followed that up with their full-length debut Matahari, which featured “Erreur 404,” a song they performed on French TV show Quotidien. Now, if you were frequenting this site last year, you may recall that I wrote about “Voodoo?,” a slinky disco strut featuring a propulsive groove, layers of arpeggiated synths, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar and Benguigui’s sultry, come-hither vocals.

Directed by Aube Perrie, the recently released video stars L’Impératice’s Flore Benguigui and is set in an alternate universe in which she kills every man in her path during a potential extraterrestrial event. She later figures out a way to have her headless victims dance and play instruments — all while she collects more victims. Visually the new video makes playful references to Mars Attacks!, horror movies and Warren G among other things.

The French act’s highly anticipated sophomore album, the L’Impératrice and Renaud Letang co-produced Taku Tsubo is slated for a March 26, 2021 release through their longtime label home. Interestingly, the album derives its name from the medical term for broken heart syndrome takutsubo syndrome (蛸 壺, from Japanese “octopus trap”). The condition usually manifests itself as deformation of the heart’s left ventricle caused by severe emotional or physical stress — i.e., the death of a loved one, an intense argument with someone you care about, a breakup, a sudden illness or the like. And while the condition can occur in men and women of any age, it primarily affects older women.

“Peur des Filles,” Tako Tsubo’s latest single is a shimmering disco floor strut, centered around a sinuous bass line, atmospheric synth arpeggios, squiggling funk guitar, an infectious hook and Benguigui’s sultry come-hither vocals. But underneath the slickly produced dance floor friendly vibes, the song is a scathingly sarcastic ode to femininity and the differences between men and women. “Vive le difference! But be careful of those men folk, they’re afraid of strong and confident women,” the song’s narrator seems to say to its listeners.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Wax Tailor Teams Up with Mark Lanegan on a Brooding and Cinematic Single and Visual

Vernon, Normandy, France-based DJ, producer Jean Christophe Le Saoût is an acclaimed producer and DJ who can trace his career back to the 90s: After a stint as a radio host in the Paris suburb, Mantes-La-Jolie, Le Saoût founded La Formule. In 1998 Le Saoût founded Lab’Oratoire Records and continued to produce material from La Formule, as well as Break Beat compilations and a collaboration with Swedish act Looptrop.

The Vernon, Normandy-based producer and DJ started the critically acclaimed symphonic, trip-hop solo recording project Wax Tailor in 2001, first appearing on a remix of Looptroop and La Formule’s “Deep Under Water.” Since then Le Saoût has released five, critically acclaimed full-length albums — 2005’s Tales of the Forgotten Melodies, 2007’s Hope & Sorrow, 2009 In The Mood For Life and 2016’s By Any Means Necessary — which found the French producer collaborating with an eclectic and diverse array of artists from all over the world.

Le Saoût’s sixth Wax Tailor album The Shadow of Their Suns is slated for release tomorrow. The album is the French producer’s first bit of new material in five years — and album continues his long-held reputation for collaborating with a diverse and eclectic array of artists, with the album featuring guest spots from D. Smoke, Rosemary Standley, Gil Scott-Heron, Del The Funky Homosapien, Mr Lif, Yugen Blakrock, Boog Brown, and JOVM mainstays Adeline and Mark Lanegan.

The Shadow of Their Suns’ material comes as a result of a lengthy period of deliberate and deep introspection inspired by a desire to truly observe and understand life in a way that’s impossible while living in the whirlwind of it all. And considering the horrible events of yesterday, an album that encourages observation, reflection, collaborative discussion, cooperation and collective action seems more urgent than ever.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: French Elelctro Pop Artist DeLaurentis Releases a Cinematic Visual for Shimmering “Life”

DeLaurentis is a French-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer and interpreter, who can trace some of the origins of her own music career to watching her father play music. She quickly understood that music notes would spring up and fly away from her arms, hands and fingers — that music was essentially a part of her.

After spending several years studying in the conservatory, DeLaurentis returned back home, where she began working on material with keyboards, sequencers, computers and other electronics. Inspired by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Max Richter, Brian Eno, Oneothrix Point Never, and Laurie Anderson, DeLaurentis eventually developed and honed a lush and cinematic sound centered around modern and vintage analog synthesizers, piano, loop machines and arpeggiators paired around her ethereal vocals.

The French electronic music artist and producer relocated to Paris, where she released her first two EPs, which featured some attention-grabbing videos. Several tracks wound up being placed in commercials and American TV shows. Building upon a growing profile, the French electronic music artist and producer began working on what would be her full-length debut Unica in a spacious and luminous Paris studio intensifying her relationship between her instruments and technology over a two year period.

Unica is a synth pop concept album that tells the tale of the fusion between woman and machine. Interestingly, the album features a track recorded with artificial intelligence, supervised by Benoit Carré, a pioneer in A.I. Additionally, the album finds DeLaurentis collaborating with Dan Black, Yaron Herman, Daymark and Fabien Waltmann.

“Life,” Unica’s cinematic first single is centered around shimmering, Giorgio Moroder-like synth arpeggios, soaring strings, skittering, tweeter and woofer rocking trap beats and DeLaurentis’ ethereal and plaintive vocals singing lyrics that draws from one of the more famous lines in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “It is a tale/Told but an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.” Thematically seeming as though it were influenced by Spike Jonze’s Her or Steven Spielberg’s AI, “Life” tells the tale of Unica coming alive and bursting out from the screen that contained her. The song goes on to have the fictional DeLaurentis and Unica meeting each other and observing each other with curiosity — and a bit of fear of what may be next for both.

Directed by the directorial collective ACCIDENT and production company Noside, the recently video is inspired by the collaborators fascination for sci-fi androids in films like Blade Runner and Ex-Machina and others. Visually, it’s a brooding and symbolic fever dream seemingly set in a dystopian world that’s not too far from our own.

As the collaborators explain the concept behind the video was to introduce the main concepts and themes behind the Unica with the video serving as a visual origin story into DeLaurentis’ Unica. “We wanted to develop this idea of birth and this coming alive process by infusing it with graphic and metaphysical references,” the collaborators explain. “The idea is to minimize the robotic aspect and to focus on the ambiguity of its double. In order to make the final revelation even more powerful: this entity that we thought was human is in fact driven by artificial intelligence. The choice of focusing on the hand is not trivial, it is in our opinion the strongest symbolism of humanity and the most powerful member on a visual and emotional level.”

The music video uses hybrid techniques combining real shots and 3D computer graphics to give life to a robotic hand, supervised by Laurent Hamery and Raphael G. while the Parisian teams of the ACCIDENT collective developed the environments and mood maps.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Cambodian-French Producer Sandap Releases a Slow-Burning New Single

Sandap is an emerging Cambodian-born, Paris-based composer, producer and electronic music artist. He was adopted at a very young age and wound up living in Paris. By the time he turned five, the Cambodian-born, Paris-based composer, producer and electronic music artist leaned violin before switching to piano, which would become his primary instrument.

Around the time, Sandap turned 11, he was introduced to composition and songwriting. And after working on material under a number of pseudonyms, he decided to release material under his own name. Sandap’s work draws from his own travels and personal experiences, as well as from the two vastly different cultures he has grown up in.

He released his first single “Rina” in 2018 and began to develop a fanbase. His latest single, “When I see us” is a slow-burning and atmospheric track centered around skittering beats, shimmering synth arpeggios, twinkling keys and layers of distorted yet plaintive vocals. While bearing a subtle resemblance to Octo Octa’s Between Both Sides, the song evokes an aching longing for a romantic relationship and for home.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Chiara Foschiani is a Paris-born-and-based singer/songwriter and pianist. Although she’s just 17, the Paris-born artist can trace the origins of her music career to learning the piano when she turned eight. Foschiani started signing when she was 13, joining local bands and performing on small stages and local music festivals before she started writing her own original material.

Since 2018, the emerging French singer/songwriter has been posting demos and covers on Soundcloud — with her material amassing over 49,000 streams. When Foschiani turned 16, she left school to fully dedicate herself to music, spending her time with literature, film, concerts, festivals and listening to new music and meeting artists. But generally speaking, she cites Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lana del Rey and others as influences on her work.

Foschiani’s second and latest single is the slow-burning ballad “My Glass of Wine.” Centered around thumping beats, shimmering and atmospheric synths and the French singer/songwriter’s self-assured and soulful vocals, “My Glass of Wine” manages to bring Dummy-era Portishead to mind, complete with a brooding, cinematic quality.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Emerging French Act Voie 81 Releases a Shimmering, Synth Pop Banger

Deriving their name from the French of word for “track” while simultaneously being a bit of a pun for the French word for voice voix and for 1981, a paradigm shifting year that saw an incredible array of changes in technology and across society, the Paris-band electro pop/New Wave duo Voie 81 prominently features three female vocalists hailing from Paris, Madrid, and Berlin, who sing unifying and socially conscious lyrics in German, English, Spanish and French.

The act’s full-length debut Ralentir which means “slow down” in French finds the act further developing a sound that’s heavily influenced by the analog synth sound of the 80s while thematically touches upon humans’ resistance to an unfair and unjust world and the hope for a better, fairer world. The album’s first single “Nirvana” is a euphoric track centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, angular guitars and an arena friendly hook paired with vocals delivered in an ethereal yet sultry French. Sonically, the track finds the emerging French act nodding at early-to-mid 1980s New Order, Giorgio Moroder, Tour de France-era Kraftwerk and even contemporaries like DBFC.

Directed by the members of Voie 81, the recently released video for “Nirvana” is set in an industrial train yard as we follow, a boombox carrying dude and a gorgeous dancer, hang out and dance together before pulling out to follow a train track across the French train ride. The video manages to be playful and decidedly DIY.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Paris’ Knights of Mandala Teams up with Khoe-Wa on a Trippy, Globalist Take on Dub

Paris-based quintet Knights of Mandala (KOM) is a dub music project that meshes modern jazz, French electro-dub, urban style with geek culture — particularly, comic books, manga, video games and sci-fi as a way of inspiring imagination and the possibilities of new worlds. And whether they play as a live band with instruments or with synthesizers and other electronics with their live machine set up, Knights of Mandala’s primary mission is to make listeners dance and travel through the power of their imagination.

Since their formation three years ago, the Parisian dub act have released three EPs. And like countless acts across the globe, they haven’t been able to play live shows — but 2020 has seen them writing and recording new material, including their latest single, the hypnotic and thumping “Wooden Prison.” Centered around shimmering and trance-inducing sitar playing by Khoe-Wa, skittering, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and reverb-drenched keys and effects, “Wooden Prison” effortlessly bridges East and West while pointedly calling out the modern condition: humanity is imprisoned in a world of rigid, soul-crushing routine that we must all resist and escape.

Directed by Thomas Restout, the recently released video starts parkour athlete Léo Urban doing his thing in the woods and in an urban environment — but throughout, there’s a sense that Urban is actively bringing himself and his soul back to nature.

“Wooden Prison” will appear on Knights of Mandala’s Urban Cycle mixtape, which will be released through Weta Records at the end of the year.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout the course of the past year, I’ve written quite a bit about Carré,  a Los Angeles-based indie electro rock act featuring:

  • 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 “playing tight” and “on point,” the Los Angeles-based trio formed last year, 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.”

The act specializes in a French electronica-inspired sound that blends aggressive, dark and chaotic elements with hypnotic drum loops while thematically, their work generally touches upon conception, abstraction and distortion of reality centered around geometric shapes and patterns, and a surrealistic outlook on our world.

The trio released their self-titled EP earlier this year, and the EP featured “Urgency,” a track centered round a bed of tweeter and woofer rocking beats, layers of shimmering synth arpeggios, bursts of slashing guitars and gauzy, electronic textures. And while being hypnotic and dance floor friendly, “Urgency” possessed a murky and menacing air that brought Ministry and Pretty Hate Machine-era Nine Inch Nails to mind.

Recently, the members of the JOVM mainstay act partnered with local act President Drone, who completely reworked “Urgency” into a minimalist yet propulsive track centered around stuttering beats, wobbling and shimmering synth arpeggios, industrial clink and clang that pushes Carré’s sound into an even more dystopian and murky direction.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DYNAH’s Inclusive and Feminist Dance Party

Melody Linhart is a Paris-based singer/songwriter and musician, who started her career playing jazz, folk and soul music. Linhart’s latest musical project, DYNAH, which derives its name from two syllables in her name is a decided — and radical — change in sonic direction for the French singer/songwriter, with her sound leaning towards the electro pop sounds of Clara Luciani, James Blake, Christine and the Queens and ACES among others.

As a result of her recent collaborations with several up-and-coming, French, British, Spanish and Dutch producers, Linhart has adopted a straightforward songwriting songwriting approach fueled by a desire for simplicity. “Songs have to come self-evidently,” Linhart says in press notes. Interestingly, the Parisian artist has found this new approach and new sound to be liberating. “Pop music is a good excuse to talk about love and sensuality,” the rising French singer/songwriter adds.

Thematically, Linhart’s material with DYNAH generally touches upon dreams, pleasure, motherhood and other topics with sincerity and earnestness — while also drawing upon the feelings and thoughts she has experienced in her own life. Earlier this year, I wrote about “Page Blanche,” the EP title track of her DYNAH debut Page Blanche — and the EP title track was a slow-burning, minimalist take on electro pop centered around skittering beats, brief blasts of strummed guitar, layered synth arpeggios paired with Linhart’s plaintive vocals singing lyrics written in English and French.

Page Blanche’s latest single “C’est moi qui chosis” (which translates as “It’s up to me to decide”) is a two-step inducing electro pop number cd featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line, an infectious hook and Linhart’s coquettish French vocals. Seemingly indebted to 80s synth funk — i.e., Evelyn “Champagne” King, Cherelle and others — the track is a feminist anthem, celebrating female empowerment in all of its forms.

Directed by Jeremy Vissio, the recently released video for “C’est moi qui chosis” features a diverse array of women and a couple of men singing and dancing along to the song, through shimmering, kaleidoscopci effects. Ultimately, the video gently reminding the listener that the song’s message applies to all, including the fiercest of them all. Also, an inclusive dance party is pretty fucking awesome.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Brooklyn-based psych pop/dance pop act Psymon Spine — Noah Prebish, Sabine Holler, Brother Michael Rudinski, and Peter Spears — can trace its origins back to when its founding duo of Noah Prebish and Peter Spears met while attending college. Bonding over mutual influences and common artistic aims, Psymon Spine’s founding duo toured the European Union with Prebish’s electronic project Karate. And as the story goes, while in Paris,  Spears and Prebish wrote their first song together. By the time, they arrived in London, they were offered a record deal. 

When the band’s founding duo returned to the States, Spears recruited Micheal “Brother Micheal” Rudinski and their Karate bandmates Devon Kilbern, Nathaniel Coffey to join their newest project. And with that lineup, they fished out the demos, which wold eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2017’s You Are Coming to My Birthday. The band went out to support the effort with immersive art and dance parties like their Secret Friend party series across Brooklyn and through relentless touring.

Prebish was also splitting his creative time with rising Brooklyn-based dram pop act Barrie and around the same time, his work with the rising dream pop act began to receive attention across the blogosphere and elsewhere through the release of a handful of buzz worthy singles, followed by their full-length debut, last year’s Happy to Be Here. Interestingly while with Barrie, Prebish met his further Psymon Spine bandmate, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sabine Holler.

Without live shows and touring, the members of Psymon Spine have been busy releasing new material this year, which included two singles:

  • “Milk,” a coquettish, club friendly banger with Barrie that brings In Ghost Colours-era Cut Copy and Soft Metals‘ Lenses and received quite a bit of attention internationally — with the single receiving praise from   Vanyaland, High Clouds, Echowave Magazine, The Revue, Hype Machine and a list of others.The track also landed on  Spotify playlists like Undercurrents, All New Indie and Fresh Finds, as well as the YouTube channels of  David Dean Burkhart, Nice Guys‘ and Birp.fm. And lastly, the track received airplay on BBC Radio 6.
  • “Modmed,” an  Andrew VanWyngarden-produced and cowritten, strutting disco-tinged track that’s actually deceptively upbeat, as it captures the ambivalent and confusing mixture of frustration, doubt and relief of a relationship that had long petered out and finally wound down to its inevitable conclusion. Interestingly, the song is inspired and informed by personal experience: Prebish and Holler’s difficult decision to leave Barrie to focus on Pysmon Spine full-time.

Psymon Spine’s third single of this year, is the hazy and lysergic banger “Confusion.” Centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, a wobbling bass line, blown out beats and Prebish’s plaintive vocals, a trippy spoken word-delivered break and a looping guitar solo, Psymon Spine’s latest single brings Tame Impala‘s Currents to mind. Much like its immediate predecessors, “Confusion” continues a run of carefully crafted and breezy, hook driven pop.

Interestingly, the release of the single manages to simultaneously coincide with the announcement of the Brooklyn-based act’s third album Charismatic Megafauna while encapsulating the album’s overall theme and vibe — the complicated feelings involved in the dissolution of human relationships. In particular “Confusion” finds the band channeling the confusing and contradictory feelings following the sort of breakup that has lead to a major rift in the larger social circle — but while also possibly hinting to the end of a friendship or working relationship. And as a result, the song seems to evoke the desire to dance away the hurt, for a little while at least.

Charismatic Megafauna is slated for a February 21, 2021 release through Northern Spy.