FOUDRE! = Frédéric D. Oberland + Mondkopf + Saåad
"Voltæ (Chthulucene)" to be released by NAHAL Recordings & ZamZamRec
October 25th 2024 — Vinyl/Digital — artwork by Brulex

Booking: sylvain@afx.agency (FR) / damien@julia.agency (Benelux)
Promo: dali@totalblamblampromo.com / maria@modernmatters.net
Vinyl/Digital pre-order: https://bit.ly/foudre-voltae
Previous discography: https://foudrenoise.bandcamp.com

"FOUDRE! emerges as a rare seismic force created in 2015 by three major activists from the independent scene: Frédéric D. Oberland (Oiseaux-Tempête), Romain Barbot (Saåad), and Paul Régimbeau (Mondkopf). They are portrayed by international press as "super-depth sounders", "laboratories of the unheard generating a fascinating sonic magma with rugged beauty", or "Badalamenti and Vangelis covered in dust and gravel". Their collective ethos is characterized by an insatiable appetite for urgency, boundless experimentation, and the spontaneous combustion of live performances.

"Melancholic. Intense. Deep. Epic. “Voltæ (Chthulucene)” is a tribute to electricity and telluric forces, a complete celebration of life, a symbiosis for an epistemic shift. “Voltæ (Chthulucene)” is the sixth opus by FOUDRE!, a trio featuring core members from Oiseaux-Tempête, Saåad & Mondkopf. 
As the first work recorded in studio, “Voltæ (Chthulucene)” is the virtuosic result of a recording session orchestrated by Camille Jamain, sound engineer and acoustician. The album emerges as a powerful electronic masterpiece, consisting of 8 tracks whose narrative dimension evokes the score of a sci-fi movie, transporting us through the labyrinths of a neo-Lovecraftian vision, into a post-AKIRA world where human and non-human life could (re)become possible, where all forms of (sur)living beings could cohabit once again... 

Since their purely exhilarating experience at the Visions Festival in 2019, FOUDRE! has undergone a delightful metamorphosis. The creative forces of the three-headed monster get unleashed. The musicians seek less the mental than the physical, embracing a frantic, corporeal, and direct turn. With “Voltæ (Chthulucene)”, the trio, identified as drone ambient, takes a twist resolutely post-techno. Emancipatory alloy of English rave, punk urgency, and electronica, with strange and electrifying echoes of ancient trad sounds. Hybrid and telepathic orchestra, composed of analog synthesizers and modular systems organically connected to acoustic instruments (baglama, winds, percussion, vocals), forming a kind of neural network twinkling at the heart of the night. 

Between contemplation, lightning flashes and illumination : the pulse, the rhythm. Hallucinated time fraction, progressing through a 3D landscape, stroboscopic and technicolor effects. A tale of struggles and resistances on universal and microscopic scale, images of cybernetic fauna and flora, a psychedelic futuristic delirium where hybrid characters of human/machine/vegetable could start to dance, mutate, and merge within everything around them. 

An intensity, an elegance reminiscent of Pita’s records on Editions Mego, the originality and intelligence of the music of Autechre, the legendary electronic abstract duo from Manchester, the energy and fervour of Black Dice, the technoid noise rock trio from Brooklyn, as well as the softness and beauty of the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. 

The album cover is signed by Brulex, featuring creatures and chimeras, with a concrete and colorful stroke, in correspondence with the album and the U-turn of FOUDRE!, decisive and brilliant."

Voltæ (Chthulucene)

Order

FOUDRE! "Visions from Zūrūtetsu" [NAHAL Recordings & ZamZamRec]

SAÅAD "Présence Absente" (LP/DL)
Release date: 13th April 2018

Cat.#: HITD 039
All tracks composed, performed & recorded by Romain Barbot & Gregory Buffier
Mixing by Aurélien Prévost
Mastering by James Plotkin
Mastercut by Mike Grinser @ Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin
Collages by Morgan Cuinet
Layout & graphic design by Romain Barbot

Label, orders: www.handsinthedarkrecords.com

SAÅAD - Temps Étranger

SAÅAD - Libations

Snowbound

More info - http://loose-lips.co.uk/blog/saaad-the-western-promise-nahal004
@nahalrecordings @saaadnotes

Orbs And Channels (2018 Reissue)

Western Promise

Pre-order

PREMIERE: Saåad - The Western Promise (NAHAL004)

'Devenir', the new EUS album, will be released next October.

Get the album:
https://contradicta.bandcamp.com/album/devenir

https://www.facebook.com/euscr/

EUS - Devenir (2019)

Sean McCann - "Puck" LP
http://www.recitalprogram.com/puck/
Edition of 500
12-page “Puck” pamphlet
Two art cards with program notes and recollections

R69 - Sean McCann - "Broth" excerpt from Puck LP

Echo of Species 07 - Mondkopf (FR - In Paradisum / Hands In The Dark)
Live at Médiathèque Musicale de Paris

@mondkopf

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Mondkopf's words about his participation:
"In 2019, I received a proposal from the Médiathèque Musicale de Paris for a concert during a "Music and Nature" cycle. For the occasion, they offered to come and search their collection of records to find material and offer a live in the form of my choice. I chose to focus at the beginning on the recordings of whales and other cetaceans, and then I drifted towards the forest, where I heard all kinds of birds and wolves. All these animals have in common a very singular language, with an impressive number of frequency variations. By focusing on it, I really heard conversations as complex as that of humans. So I used this material to create a kind of animal choir, which would sing with my own tools and for the public. I had spotted a piano in the room where I was to play, and on the day of the concert, I decided to improvise on it to accompany wolves, owls, and other night animals. The live I offer for Echos of Species is a second recording of this live made at home, with better recording conditions. I kept the live piano of the first performance at the end because I doubt that I would have managed to recreate this moment :) Good listening and be kind to the planet !"

_ _ _


To know more about the artist:
Paul Régimbeau, aka Mondkopf, is a household name among the edgiest international festivals such as ATP, LUFF, Bozar or CTM, post-industrial warehouses of northern Europe, industrial parties (Berghain in Berlin, Kaos in London) as well as more solemn atmospheres of churches, museums (BAL, Pompidou Center in Paris) or auditoriums (Philarmonie de Paris, Lyon’s Auditorium). Mondkopf has put forward his talents as a live artist, giving his melodic ambient music a power and a rager inspired by extreme metal. After a long period of solitary evolution, he has developed in this last years multiple collaborative projects, with Charlemagne Palestine, Saaad (in Foudre), Autrenoir, Oiseaux-Tempête, the Japanese black metal band Vampilia and the noise American artist Pete Swanson (in VMO), Libanese guitarist Charbel Haber (in Good Luck In Death). After co-founding In Paradisum records in 2011, he has been running since 2018 the record label Nahal Recordings with Frederic D. Oberland, gathering a community of outsiders around a shared passion for live improvisation, the mix of rock structures and sound synthesis, and cinematographic atmospheres.
 
Wire Magazine described his last album, They fall but you don’t, as the "the only music that fits that once promising and much abused term power ambient: massive sharp-edged drones, slow lightning cracks of guitars, Tangerine Dream synths curling around one another, everything glowering with an inner intensity that still feels closely reined in". Indeed, while  Mondkopf’s music has long been rather dark, heavy and abrasive, his trajectory testifies for a profound attachment to a sound that associates harmonic flourishment with experimentation, which doesn’t come as a surprise when you learn that he grew up listening to Tangerine Dream, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Morton Feldman, Brian Eno, Ash Ra Temple or even Vangelis. 

You can support Mondkopf here: https://handsinthedarkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/how-deep-is-our-love

_ _ _

Credits:
Mondkopf
Live at Médiathèque Musicale de Paris

Music by Mondkopf
Modular system, voice, effects, and piano played by Mondkopf
Recorded & mixed by Mondkopf
Field recordings from:
Songs Of The Humpback Whale (1970)
Jun Kawabata - Mind Migration (Voyage To The Whale) (1992)
Jean C. Roché - Chouettes Et Hiboux
Dan Gibson - Night On a Wilderness Lake (1982)

Thanks to Damien Poncet and all crew of the Médiathèque Musicale de Paris!

https://mediathequemusicaledeparis.wordpress.com/

🌳1x tree has been planted to balance the carbon footprint of this upload (Project Povos da Floresta).

Echo of Species 07 - Mondkopf

Basic Space’s zeal for music is deeply rooted. As organizer of the techno event series Momentvm, he made decisive contributions to great and memorable events in Zurich where he is based. Furthermore, he co-founded Paranoise Radio over a decade ago, a webradio in which he is still an active member and broadcasts his music findings on a monthly basis.
His great perception of industrial, left-field techno, and dark electro is compiled in an unforgettable hour-long listening experience.

@mmntmzh

01. Saåad - Incarnat III (The Invisible Steeple) :: In Paradisum
02. ANFS - Monoi Sto Spiti :: Agia Varvara Originals
03. Kangding Ray - Lone Pyramids :: Stroboscopic Artefacts
04. Antechamber - Lobs Pound :: Instruments of Discipline
05. Wara - Najam Aishama ⁄ نجم الشمال :: Urban Legend Records
06. Overlook - Loyal To The Unsung :: Osiris Music
07. Nigh/T\mare - Without Believing :: Thrènes
08. Sciahri - Unconscious Unconscious :: Sublunar
09. These Hidden Hands - When Told (Atom™ Remix) :: Hidden Hundred
10. Kaczmarek - IIIIIIIII (Djedjotronic Remix) :: KCZMRK
11. Pi-xl - Disciplinary Action (Remix) :: Dominance Electricity
12. Restive Plaggona - Waitress Attack :: Sacred Court
13. Umwelt - Superior Life Forms :: Midnight Shift
14. UVB 76 - SG1 :: Midi Deux Entertainment
15. Uun - The Talisman :: Ego Death

Thrènes Mix 025

Basic-Space - Thrènes Mix 025

It may be the first time you hear of FOUDRE! but it's already their fifth full-length album. Previously appearing on BLWBCK and Gizeh, this exclamatory named project is actually a supergroup [that's when numerous established solo artists come together for a unique collaboration], comprising of Frédéric D. Oberland (aka Oiseaux Tempête, Le Réveil des Tropiques, FareWell Poetry), Romain Barbot (Saåad), Paul Régimbeau (Mondkopf, Extreme Precautions, Autrenoir) and Grégory Buffier (Autrenoir, Mätiss). If those names are familiar to you, then so is their music, which is generally evocative, post-apocalyptic, drony, noisy, and dark. So you can imagine their potential at conjuring the spirits of the underworld during a joint ritual. This particular gathering "stems from a desire to probe the invisible forces that live within us, through a ceremony that brings together occult sciences, forgotten landscapes and the fever of the unconscious." Such is the case with their latest release for the French NAHAL Recordings, a label run and curated by Régimbeau and Oberland themselves. The music is brooding, stirring, and menacing. The synth pulses chase after heartrate, the instruments wail, the organ evokes a post-spiritual creed. I can only imagine this music performed live on the stage - an experience from which this semi-improvised exploration in texture originally flourished. Yes, I miss feeling live music so very much. The closest I can come to this encounter is by putting on a record at home and turning it up to eleven. So here's a teaser from the group's upcoming Future Sabbath album, released early next year, with a premiere of a track titled "Black Swan Theory I."

"Gathering regularly since their debut in 2015, FOUDRE! brings together electronic and acoustic instruments, merging incarnate and disembodied souls, past and snippets of a post-apocalyptic future. After the ghostly and hovering EARTH (2017) then the wild and telluric KAMI神 (2018), Future Sabbath travels even further into the tangle of genres and textures, offering a luxuriant palette of moods and emotions. Passing through the tracks with evocative titles, mystical symbols, and spiritual signs set this Sabbath of machine sorcerers ablaze."

The album is out on January 15th, 2021, available as a digital release, as well as on a deluxe 12″ vinyl [with a stamped metal red hot foil]. The album features fantastic cover art by Faye Formisano sourced from her La Danse Secrète series of drawings using a blue crayon. It looks nice and sinister in red!

Future Sabbath

Black Swan Theory I

TRACK PREMIERE : FOUDRE! - Black Swan Theory I

Retrospect | Podcast 001 | Saåad
06.02.2021

After five years, welcome back on board an experimental music project called Saåad (@saaadnotes)

BIO:
Saåad is an experimental project from Toulouse (France) founded during the last days of 2009 by Romain Barbot.

T/L:
01. Ariel Kalma – Almora Sunrise
02. Tanz Mein Herz – Tales From The Middle Of The Night
03. Valentina Magaletti & Marlene Ribeiro – Part None
04. Hainbach – Humming
05. FOUDRE – Liberation of the Mystics II
06. Hélène Volgelsinger – Astral Projection
07. EUS – Muerte
08. Siavash Amini & Saåad – Dragging The Harrow 
09. Sarah Davachi – The Pelican
10. Anna von Hausswolff – Theatre Of Nature
11. SaffronKeira – Ghosts
12. Martina Bertoni – Music For Empty Flats

SC: @saaadnotes
FB: www.facebook.com/saaadmusic
BC: www.saaad.bandcamp.com
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www.facebook.com/MiejscaWTechnoGdzie

RETROSPECT 001: Saåad

Saåad is an experimental project based in Toulouse, France