u/BBBBBBB9122

Hello Overloaders. What do you think about Dimitri From Paris? Not sure if he fits here, as, in some ways, his music is very much conventional club music. But, in other ways, not: Sacrebleu, for example, is a very curious album.

Anyway, I've long been a massive fan and got to interview him recently, if you're interested: https://soundcloud.com/line-noise-podcast/line-noise-268-dimitri-from

More importantly: are you fans? Does he fit here? What are your favourite tunes?

Hello everyone. I hope this doesn't seem too self promo-y but I interviewed French musician Colleen recently and we got into lots of Moog talk, particularly about the Matriarch, which she used to record her excellent new album Libres antes de final. I thought it might be of interest!

https://soundcloud.com/line-noise-podcast/line-noise-267-colleen-returns

From about 11 minutes in.

And an excerpt for you:

Q The album is all made on the Moog Matriarch?

Colleen Yes, the whole album.

Q Why did you want to deliberately limit yourself to one instrument?

Colleen

This process of limiting myself has been going on for quite a few years. When you last interviewed me for my previous album, The Tunnel and the Clearing, that was super restricted as well because it was one synthesiser, which was monophonic, and just two delays, which is a very, very minimal setup. In this case, you could say it's more minimal because it's one synth, but it does have a delay that's integrated, and it's paraphonic.

Not going to go into too many technical details, but paraphonic is not exactly the same as polyphonic. To shorten it, it does mean you can play chords and a melody. So for me, that was a big shift from the previous synthesiser, the Grandmother. It's just such a beautiful synthesiser. I worked on this album for about a year and a half, and even after a year and a half of really digging into it, I'm still just at the tip of the iceberg. It's just a really amazing synthesiser.

Radio Primavera Sound has an interview with Yves, in which she talks about "the challenging but deeply rewarding journey of stepping out as a solo artist after her time in LOONA. She discusses breaking out of the traditional K-pop box to experiment with genres like House and Rock, the creative chemistry with her producer IOAH, and how PinkPantheress inspired her sound. She also reflects on overcoming self-doubt, learning to love herself more, and why her track "DIORAMA" is the ultimate representation of who she is today."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUnIiWV5IMs

I hope some of you may find it interesting.

On this podcast: https://soundcloud.com/line-noise-podcast/line-noise-266-victor

Madonna bit is about 30 minutes in. And there is quite a lot of it.

Any FSOL fans out there? I reckon so... I wrote about them on my newsletter this week and I hope you might enjoy it.

https://linenoise.substack.com/p/the-future-sound-of-london-will-gloriously

Also, what are your favourite FSOL / Amorphous Androgynous tracks? This one didn't even make it in my list but it utterly brilliant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOvazJ_o6N0

.... starting with Ciutat, later this day:

https://linenoise.substack.com/p/pau-cristoful-from-the-primavera

I wrote about my six favourite Remarc drum tracks (Remarc and Lewi Cifer - Sceptic, Sound Murderer, Drum N’ Bass Wise (remix), R.I.P, Ice Cream and Syrup (Hard mix) and Thunderclap in case you can't be arsed to read).

https://linenoise.substack.com/p/a-remarc-of-obsession-saluting-the

What are yours?

"Much great music is the result of obsession. It might be obsessive love, obsessive hate or just that obsessive desire to keep on doing what you are doing until something truly remarkable drops out the other side.

Remarc, aka Marc Forrester from Brockley in South East London, is a perfect example of the latter obsession, his fixation with chopping up the Amen break into ever more extreme iterations resulting in a series of classic 12 inch releases in 1994 and 1995 that rushed jungle further into the future."

(More jungle than DnB but you never know, might be of interest.)

"Ben Cardew spoke to Krautrock / kosmische hero Michael Rother about Neu!, Harmonia, Kraftwerk and his solo career, taking in creative explosions, musical freedom, the perverse advantage of not having gear, the Neu "!" and whether he is a fan of Stereolab."

https://soundcloud.com/line-noise-podcast/line-noise-263-michael-rother

Interesting bit here about his relationship with Dieter Moebius

"[The name] Harmonia was actually a joke, because [Hans-Joachim] Roedelius, [Dieter] Moebius, and I, as much as we enjoyed working together and being together, it was especially a struggle between Moebius, who was... unfortunately, he cannot defend himself, but I love the guy and he's with me in my thoughts many times. 

He died 11 years ago. And he was... I called him lazy. I was furious because he refused to join me in my attempts at adding more structure to the live music. Harmonia music sometimes consisted of us searching for an hour, or one and a half. In the meantime, the audience went away, or fell asleep, or just started talking and smoking and I wasn't very happy with that. I thought, instead, I must go one step back.

One thing that happened in one concert - the first concert we played semi-live for the four friends of the place where we lived - that was us searching for one and a half hours and listening to the recording of the whole one and a half hours, they were so friendly, these people. They didn't talk, they just sat on sofas and thought, "I don't know what these guys are looking for, but it doesn't seem they're finding it." But the five minutes in which we really came together led to the recording of the track Ohrwurm on the first Harmonia album. It's a classic and that is pure magic.

So this was a discussion, especially between Moebius and me, how to not give up the aspiration, the hope of getting some magic, but also preventing the search from running for one hour or longer. This was something that we struggled along and so when we thought of a name, it was, ha ha, Harmonia. "

I interviewed him this week. I hope it might be of interest: he talks about jungle versus drum & bass, the influence of Portishead, Remarc etc.

Also this:

"What one Sully track would you play to someone to show them what you do? And why?

Sully: Am I trying to win them over or wig them out? The DJ in me would try and read the room a bit but failing that I’d go with Werk or 5ives. Or if it’s more the direction I’m heading in I’d go with Model Collapse ‘cos it’s a lot more open palette wise it feels like that’s the path I’m on now."

Interview here: https://linenoise.substack.com/p/john-denvers-got-some-bangers-an

And what one Sully track would you pick to introduce someone to his work?

Are we fans of Olof Dreijer? I think the music he has been releasing under his own name has been spectacular. (More so than Oni Ayhun, for me.)

Anyway, I interviewed Olof for Line Noise - I hope it might be of interest.

https://soundcloud.com/line-noise-podcast/line-noise-260-olof-dreijer

"The wonderful Olof Dreijer visited the RPS studios to talk about his solo debut album, Loud Bloom, a record of colour, joy and bustling life. We talked about living in Barcelona, aquatic synths, the shadow of The Knife, jazz, click consonants, sci-fi and getting away from the macho forces in dance music."

The last point I thought was really interesting. What do you think?

Line Noise: You mentioned in the press release of the album that you want to get away from the macho forces in dance music. Why do you think dance music has gone that way? Because you listen to early Detroit techno or early Chicago house - melodies all over the place, songs, that kind of thing. Early Detroit techno, again, loads of really beautiful melodies. And I agree with you, I think a lot of dance music has got very macho, very hard. Why do you think this has happened?

Olof Dreijer: I don't know. I mean, there is so much to say, but I mean, I was thinking... I'm thinking now, should I give an encouraging answer or maybe a not-so-encouraging answer? But let's try to do both.

The not-so-encouraging side, I guess, is that we are in a patriarchy and we are in a regression time and things are going backwards. And it's funny to see that men who already have a lot of power want to take more power and feel the need to be more macho or whatever and this is affecting everything.

But parallel to that, if you just look at the music, the funny thing - or not-so-funny thing - is that in the past, in the 80s and 90s, the big techno producers would play much more mixed than they do today. Like, Jeff Mills would play some disco, and there would be some samba grooves. It was fast and very pushy but it was quite all over the place. And if you do that today, you're seen... I mean, on one hand, it's coming back now. You also see that people mix in a bit of everything, which is very nice. But I always mixed a lot and I always felt people say that it's very eclectic and all over the place.