David McKenna
, May 18th, 2021 08:14
David McKenna ponders the influence of Paris’ Seine-Saint-Denis suburb and samples Marseille rap, mongrel folk and prepared pianos. Home page photograph: Sourdure by Eloïse Decazes
Recently I’ve been reflecting on the outsize impact of one of France’s smallest administrative departments – Seine-Saint-Denis, which covers a little over 90 square miles and is known informally as
le quatre-vingt treize or
le neuf-trois – ‘the ninety-three’) after its department number – on French popular music. Listening to Gazo’s superb
Drill FR release and looking up some autobiographical details, I found myself thinking “oh,
le 93 again!”
Established in 1968, Seine-Saint-Denis is part of Paris’s
Spitfire Audio Teams Up With Hainbach
Landfill Totems sample library features sounds from his new concept album 09/04/21
Spitfire Audio s latest release with
SA Recordings comes from electronic innovator, composer and sonic mastermind,
Hainbach . They tell us that it features his mind-blowing new concept album,
Landfill Totems, and a sample library of the same name which comprises an extension of the highly unique sound palette of the record. Here s more details direct from Spitfire Audio.
This exciting new venture distils many elements of Hainbach s work into an immaculate project; an irrepressible childlike fascination and obsession for experimenting, a mischievous sense of humour and a truly innovative approach to electronic production and composition. Discover a truly unique world of cutting-edge, complex sounds, expertly curated by the artist from long-forgotten, now-obsolete, test equipment collected from nuclear research labs, grandfathers sheds and scrap h
Veil
Daryl Worthington
, April 7th, 2021 08:14
Opal Tapes founder Stephen Bishop and avant-turntablist Mariam Rezaei make audible the latency of a socially distanced world for Daryl Worthington
Early cinema-goers were more fascinated by the background action of dust, leaves, and crowds than what happened in the foreground, so a popular anecdote goes. Minds were blown by the camera’s ability to capture these incidental movements. Transfixed, for instance, by spooky actions of steam from a locomotive instead of whatever was happening to the train itself.
My ears follow a similar path with Stephen Bishop and Mariam Rezaei’s
Veil, tracing the odd choreography of sounds within these glitching tracks. On opener ‘Voul’, an orchestra gently unravels with a stumbling gait while whirs and drones hover in the distance. Zoom out and the piece elegantly builds to a hyperactive crescendo, zoom in and there’s a universe of movements within the movement. The title track and ‘Ab