First to start with the title, Victoria Lucas was Sylvia Plath’s pseudo name when she wrote ‘The Bell Jar’. I keep going on bay, trying to find an original copy of ‘The Bell Jar’ written by Victoria Lucas and they show up every now and then but they are very pricy. 

A lot of the titles in the record are inspired by either my favourite writers or works by my favourite writers and this one it’s an instrumental. So there is always that question when you write an instrumental, what do you call it? So why not name it after one of my favourite writers? 

The way I write, composing or compiling a song, I start with one arbitrary, decontextualised element and in this case it was a backwards guitar loop. I have a foot switch where you play something into it, you push a button, and it takes what you played and plays it backwards but really lo-fi. I was playing guitar onto it and I ended up with this really weird sounding guitar loop that doesn’t sound like a guitar loop, I recorded that and started adding different elements. 

At first it was this very slow ballad like song and then I added house music drums to it, and house piano to it and ended up with this weird hodgepodge of quiet, disconcerting, atmospheric elements with house music elements. I hope it works. 

The guitar loop for Victoria Lucas was recorded here in New York. I was just living with the guitar loop listening to it over and over again. I had this terrible case of insomnia in Los Angeles. I was staying in a hotel there and so I started adding the quiet atmospheric elements to the song when I was in L.A. and I brought everything back to New York and turned it into a weird messed up, house music song.


Victoria Lucas

The song ‘Blue Moon’ is one of the only other songs I sing on the record and it’s basically a really simple new wave, new romantic song that I was tempted to not put it on the record. 

I was talking to Daniel Miller, who started Mute Records and he got very passionate. He saying, 'you have to put this song on the record'. I really liked it but I was thinking 'it seems a little straight forward because most of the rest of the record is little more atmospheric and experimental'. So Daniel Miller was the one, who basically put a gun to my head and said, if you are gonna make this record, you have to put this song on it. 

I love late 70s, early 80s, new wave, synch pop. You know, the new romanic era. The one thing that’s hard in talking about the new romantic era is a lot of my favourite bands from then or favourite artists went on to make not very good records. But in 1980, ‘81, ‘82, Heaven 17 and Ultravox, and Visage, and early Simple Minds, that’s the inspiration, and New Order. The song ‘Blue Moon’ is solely inspired by that period. It’s what I grew up with and I still love it. 


Blue Moon

Well, how do I speak about it being inspired by a12th century plainsong? Not too many cool rock musicians are listening to 12th century sacred music. But there is a group out of Norway, that’s the woman, who sings on the record. Trio Mediaeval. 

I’ve always loved the simplicity of early music and Gregorian chants and plainsong. There is just this austere simplicity that I find really comforting. So I was listening to this ‘Trio Mediaeval’ record and I basically wrote a bunch of string arrangements around their acapella recording and then went to the woman who sang it and said, 'Oh, is it possible for you to re-sing it to this arrangement that I’ve written'. 

I think she was eight and a half month pregnant. So she has this little studio in her garage in Norway, she recorded the vocals, handed the recording off to her husband and then went and gave birth.

Stella Maris

Now we enter the purely instrumental part of the record. So I have no idea how to talk about these songs. Except for basically how they are made and the title like ‘The Violent Bear It Away’. Flannery O’Connor was one of my other high-school crushes. I only had crushes on dead women and I love southern Gothic literature. Of all the southern Gothic writers I like, she is certainly my favorite, her writings where dark, and poignant and filled with grace, and funny at the same time. 

I had a little recorder in my living room and I was playing piano and I recorded three chords on the piano. Just little arpeggiated three chords, took this bad recording of piano into my studio, put it into pro-tools, looped it, looped it, looped it, and started adding all the other elements on top of it. 

One of the things I particularly liked about this song is it starts very simple and innocent and it gets bigger and it keeps getting bigger, it keeps getting bigger. I mean, I have no idea how anyone else might respond to the music that I make. So someone else might listen to this song and be like, oh you know what, it’s repetitive and boring and you might as well have left it off the record. But I personally love the way it develops and just when it gets to a certain point, it then gets a little bit bigger. It’s almost like the opposite of the Russian doll. Starting with the tiny doll, and gets bigger and bigger, and bigger. 


The Violent Bear It Away

"NEPTUNE" EP - FRANÇOIS IER // OUT NOW
Order : https://itunes.apple.com/fr/album/neptune/id882560215

TRACKLIST
1/ François Ier - Neptune (Original Mix)
2/ François Ier - Blue Hole (Original Mix)
3/ François Ier - Cold Currents (Original Mix)
4/ François Ier - Sonar (Original Mix)

2014 Boxon Records
Artwork : Romain Danos

https://www.facebook.com/FrancoisIerMusic
http://www.boxonrecords.com

Buy on iTunes

François Ier - Neptune

It's the first vital sign of the upcoming new GUSGUS full-length - primer single CROSSFADE unites all the beloved traits of Iceland's iconic outfit: the flamboyant vocals, the anthemic pop infusions, the driving beats. And as on the highly acclaimed, best-selling
precursor album ARABIAN HORSE , it all comes
together in a stunning whirlwind of locomotive bliss that is as loco as it is exhilarating.
This emotional thrill ride par excellence delves deep into its own vibrant, gloomy glamour while rubbing its chords into the open wounds of 21st century dance floors.
CROSSFADE brings back the intoxicating rush of diamantine melodies and monomaniac narration the band has become known for, all ghillied up in the kind of deceptively simple pop regalia that only seem straightforward, but hide their shoals in plain sight. "Do you remember the day when we started to crossfade?" - well, if you didn't before, you do now.

GusGus - Crossfade

♬  Full Article ♬
http://www.deephouseamsterdam.com/full-premiere-weval-rooftop-paradise-live/

Weval is a collaboration between two pals from the Netherlands – Harm Coolen and Merijn Scholte Albers. Both Harm and Merijn got their start in the film industry, which is where they met in 2010. When they found out they shared the same love for creating electronic music, they decided to team up.

September 9th will see a (vinyl) re-issue of their debut EP: "Half Age" and a new single: "Rooftop Paradise (Live)", which will be available as a beatport bonus track.

Full Premiere: Weval - Rooftop Paradise (Live)

Scars

Listen to BLOODFLOW on Spotify: http://bit.ly/gbbloodflow

Taken from Grandbrothers new album 'Open' to be released via City Slang on Oct 20. 

Pre-Order: https://grandbrothers.lnk.to/openYD

Grandbrothers - Bloodflow

'Tricky Tricky' taken from the new Röyksopp album 'Junior', features vocals from Karin Dreijer-Andersson from The Knife and Fever Ray. More information at htp://royksopp.com

Tricky Tricky (Original)

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Memory Gospel (Soultekks Smooth & Deep Mix) pre-view

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