Tuesday, February 24, 2015

BCBG on Glenlivet A Gogh Records


French duo, BCBG had to travel all the way to Brazil to finally get together. Mariette Auvray (Pussy Patrol, Eyes Behind, Water Sark) and Samuel Trifot (Kikiilimikilii, Feu Machin, Dorcelsiushe) knew of each other from separately playing in the Paris underground experimental scene and at first probably never intended on releasing this seven inch. I could see how they probably got together to throw some ideas around having heard of each other and before they knew it things got serious and a tour and full length and this single came along.

A-Side's "Jaune de Naples" opens with a wooden xylophone melody plinking along before the track quietly explodes into synth lines and ancient percussion emulators. I don't think it's just because the vocals are delivered in french but it's the lullabye, sing song delivery that Mariette Auvray has that reminds me heavily of Stereolab. It has a similar bubbly repetition of odd synth voices with a million layers of programmed drums of all kinds; metal hammering, clicks of glitchy rimshots and the static sharp snare of old 808's. It eventually peaks into lush simmering dance with more layers of Auvray's vocals and high timpani synth sounds feeling like The Knife's sound of classic electronics under a modern aesthetic. It's just as hard to pin down how it's contemporary when these elements are anything but.
The B-Side's "Desert Narquios" opens on a heavy repetition of raw sine waves, the sort of primal Kraftwerk stuff endlessly cycling around. Mariette seems to take her melody here from Turkish or Middle Eastern sources soaring above this Tron inspired grid. I think if there were a logical recombination of influences in some sci-fi future it would sound a lot like this. Not because they are the most impossible to imagine coming together but because that style will most likely eventually integrate into all popular music like hip hop. It's a pounding, trance-like future psych that wouldn't even need more than a laptop and a PA to reproduce so these two could vagabond between asteroid dive bars, trying to make enough credits to get to the next rock. It's currently in production for Amazon Prime.

Available at the source, Glenlivet A Gogh Records or for those of us in the US, at good olde Easter Bilby Distro.

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