Un Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 4 Items

Domotic − the alias used by musician Stéphane Laporte − composed and mixed this new album, Palazzo, at the invitation of Ina GRM, and it is a wonderful addition to a career full of projects and numerous releases. Recorded with his favorite analog synth, the Sh01, his four-track Mt4x and a Copicat tape echo unit, this electronic piece was subsequently mixed in binaural and stereo .

London based Valentina Magaletti, is a composer, producer and percussionist experimenting with new materials and sounds. She is one of the most prominent musicians of the wide experimental world. The prolific drummer collaborates with many musicians and releases albums in all musical directions (from noise to jazz by way of dub...). She was part of the acclaimed duo Tomaga until the tragic passing of Tom Relleen in 2020. Lately Valentina Magaletti collaborates with Joao Pais Filipe, Lafawndah, Marlene Ribeiro, Julian Sartorius among many others and she is part of bands like Vanishing Twin, Better Corners, Holy Tongue, Uuuu, Avvitagalli, Moin... She released 3 solo albums, La Tempesta Colorata (A Colourful Storm, 2022), A Queer Anthology Of Drums (Takuroku/Cafe Oto, 2020) and Valentina Plays The Batterie Fragile (Un je-ne-sais-quoi, 2017).

The Batterie fragile is a sculpture conceived by artist Yves Chaudouët. A drum-kit made out of porcelain.

Yves Chaudouët is a French visual artist. His first interest was painting. From the 1990s, he began to experiment with other art forms such as filmmaking, installation, theater and novels.

This is the second installment of recording on that amazing drum kit. The first recording (2017) was a testimony of the 1st meeting between Valentina and the drumkit during a live experience in Tours (Fr) at le Musée des Beaux-Arts during the Super Flux Festival. It was a raw recording (fragile itself) picking up a very quick meeting and two magical improvisations. It naturally led Yves Chaudouët to build another Batterie fragile with few improvements (as if the 1st one were a prototype) and quickly to plan to record another album.

Recorded in 2021 at Impersonal studio in Rennes (fr) with Thomas Poli on a magnificent analog console Studer 928, edited and mixed in 2022 at Abbey Road studio (uk) by Valentina Magaletti and Leon Marks, this outstanding recording, composed and performed by Valentina Magaletti on an unlikely sounding instrument is a poetic and unique experience. Valentina took time to explore all the sounding possibilities of the drums, using different kinds of sticks, wire brushes and rubber beaters. The recordings have been assembled in a collage-style approach dear to her and result in two otherworldly tracks that reveal a few secrets of the mysterious drum kit through Valentina Magaletti’s fantastic play and delicate versatility.

To create this new album, Magaletti says, “I applied wood and metal and rubber to the porcelain. My starting point is always textural, and I’m very interested and enchanted by friction.”

An important work in the career of one of the best drummers and composers of her time, which Un je-ne-sais-quoi is proud to share with you.

Images Of Goo is what Munich sound bricolageurs Leo Hopfinger aka LeRoy (head of Das Hobos, H, Spiritual Emojis and others) and Cico Beck aka Joasihno (active member of The Notwist, Aloa Input, Spirit Fest and others) call their first musical dialogue in album format.

It is equally a dialogue with the elements of their sonic repertoire of echo variations and sonic shadows from the percussive instrument box. In their sum, a Wunderkammer of a panaudic, which can be approached and departed in six tracks per side.

There we pass a fuzzy factory flow music of sound tiles and find ourselves in the next station in a game of pot banging and gong shower with firecrackers and other sound explosions. Tinpan tinkertoy and sparkler warehouse become an offbeat downbeat of sound loops, and already we imagine ourselves amid the hammering and pounding of a magic sound forge at the center of the earth, which may be the center of a distant galaxy.

On side two, we enter a dripstone cave boogaloo ("Let's start tripping") and it drips candle wax from a vocoder space-age melody, emoting and coagulating into a Morse-coding cumbia chant. Wax music this is - music that grows out of itself, even if by the means of tape and collage.

At the end there is a music snake, which, having become snake music itself, disappears in front of our ears with a swing. And maybe this is the beginning ...

Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, musician, composer but also visual artist, continues his very singular journey to the heart of sound matter, with an album composed on Baschet sound structures. From the 1950s, the Baschet brothers created a truly innovative set of instruments which has since fascinated musicians seeking new sound experiences. Both sculptures of glass, metal and instruments of great acoustic sharpness, these sound structures have made rare but remarkable forays into recordings of contemporary music (Bernard Baschet, Jacques Lasry, Luc Ferrari..)