2010s 339 Items

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2019! EP on marbled vinyl + CD. At a nailbiting media event in January 2019, Mooneye's 'Thinking About Leaving' was announced as the winner of Studio Brussel's De Nieuwe Lichting.

Midnight Embassy is a ping­pong project by songwriter Angela Aux and producer Sam Irl. During nightly sessions and on walks together, the two artists have created a palette of timeless tracks and futuristic sculptures from pop music flotsam. Like if two archive junkies had synchronized their sketch collections and notebooks so that the different genres and decades seem to effortlessly swirl through each other: Dub, Folk, Beatnik literature, Afrobeat & Electronica. Aux & Irl celebrate a gentle escapism, both cosmopolitan and aloof. This island mentality sparkles unobtrusively through all five tracks of the debut EP. No fireworks, no illuminated advertisements, no selfie thunderstorms: they come at dusk, set shimmering beacons and disappear on a reverberation trail behind the curtain of the night.

Sarah Benabdallah and Alexis Lebon are a very 21st century musical coupling, absorbing their metropolitan surroundings while tapping into a rich cultural heritage, not unlike fellow countrymen PNL or the Dutch band Altin Gün. A Paris-based duo set for greatness they might be, but it’s fair to say Mauvais Oeil are operating under a misnomer: while their name means “evil eye” in French, you’ll only experience enlightenment when you lay eyes (and ears) upon them.
Mauvais Oeil are set to release their debut EP Nuits de velours, a magical melting pot of musical shibboleths and contemporary grooves. On opener “Mes nuits de velours”, we’re transported in the land of 1001 Arabian Nights, with the music every bit as smooth and alluring as the subject matter. “Afrita” is a trance-inflected musical acclamation evoking all the madness and gayety of a midsummer souk. Sung entirely in Arabic with delightful blasts of strings, it’s a North African-influenced banger with a delicate wistfulness.
“Asha” meanwhile is in a reference to Asha Vahishta, the middle-eastern concept of truth according to the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. Sung again in Arabic, it features catchy Phrygian guitar manoeuvres played over ambient analogue keyboard strokes. The E.P. is completed by “Constantine”, a song of longing, dedicated to the home of Sarah’s forebears.
Having met in the arty northern faubourgs of Paris, Sarah and Alexis soon developed a musical telepathy and a shared sonic agenda, mining their own histories for the profound cultural roots that underscore Mauvais Oeil, while absorbing the ubiquitous sounds of the suburbs, where Turkish, Armenian and Ethiopian music ring out. The band’s moving and melancholic chansons are delivered with a delightful French pop sensibility, making Mauvais Oeil one of the most exciting and musically diverse prospects in 2019.