Artist Bancal
Titile: Abruti
Label: guides
Format: digital / cassette (edition of 70)
Mastering: Mateusz Wysocki
Artwork: Marta Sieczkowska

Clément Decaudin, aka Bancal, is a French producer and sound artist. He has been active in the local french scene for over a decade, creating noise, abstract music, hip-hop and exploring the footwork tradition as a representative of the producers' collective Le French Work. The album „Abruti” attempts to bring all these fascinations together and set a new direction in Decaudin's work.

„Abruti” refers to Decaudin's first electronic project of the same name. It was as Abruti that he attempted to create music grounded in the sounds of digital noise, punk and hardcore, drawing inspiration from Minor Threat, Black Flag, Raster Noton. This resulted in the album „Mauvaises Définitions”, released in 2020, containing short and radical digital noise tracks. In 2022, Decaudin was invited to present his 'abruti' work at the Lille VJfest. It was the perfect moment to redefine his early work and make it more accessible and danceable.

„Abruti” is ten feisty tracks, filled with dense and razor-sharp sounds. Dirty, bubbling basses, raster-noton-like digital raw data and 8-bit synths are set on a footwork structure. A punk volte-face and a resounding sense of simple irony hovers over the whole album. An unusual sense of humour can be found not only in the titles of the individual tracks, but also in the sound of „Abruti” itself, which evokes similarities with the music of the famous electronic ironist Luke Vibert.

Bancal has succeeded in creating a remarkably coherent concept of music set on an expressive foundations. On the one hand, we hear the tradition of punk radicalism, and on the other we hear the hedonistic experience of dance electronica. These seemingly difficult to reconcile contradictions live in a perfect symbiosis on „Abruti” – poking, biting and scratching at the same time, they make you want to jump up and down on the dance floor.

Bancal - Abruti

Audio by Schall/Formen (Album Version)
Artwork by Formen

In Echtzeit

Bandcamp

Performance at the intense listening session "Liegen im Vakuum" at the Anstadt Bern

Audio by Formen (Album Version)
Artwork by Formen

Formen - Ratio

Audio by Formen (live cut)
Artwork by Roy Lichtenstein (edited)

Nachklang

"sunbathing on quartz rooftops..."

i'm planning on releasing another ep! it'll consist of this track and some other tracks i've uploaded to various places over the past few months. hopefully it'll come in a few weeks, i just need to get some time to remaster the tracks and get some art together and such

bandcamp: https://vekon.bandcamp.com
youtube: https://youtube.com/@vekonvekonvekon
newgrounds: https://vekon.newgrounds.com
bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/vekon.newgrounds.com

arcie coronae

Formenlehre 01b

transition minus one/2

cli (from "CULT", out now)

look up, look up
look up into the sky
see the drones
flying by

listen up, listen up
do you hear the whirring blades?
mosquitos in an angry swarm
digital bitcrush tirade

wherever you are
they can see you
wherever you run
they can find you

if you shoot one down
another comes around
they are the drones
they are the drones

look up, look up
look up into the sky
see the drones
flying by

listen up, listen up
do you hear the whirring blades?
mosquitos in an angry swarm
digital bitcrush tirade

wherever you are
they can see you
wherever you run
they can find you

if you shoot one down
another comes around
they are the drones
they are the drones

they are the drones
wherever you are
they can see you

they are the drones
wherever you run
they can find you

Drones

"A Pattern Language of Phasing Turntables" is Formen’s current live project. Rooted in his interest in dubplate cutting, experimental music, and performance art, the project centres on an analogue setup: three turntables, a mixing console, and a tape machine.

The musical material for each performance consists of self-made lathe cuts that Formen prepares in his studio. He develops minimalist musical fragments or works with stems from collaborators, cutting these ideas onto dubplates. During performance, the dubplates are recombined live; minute differences in timing, pitch and frequency generate new, improvised compositions that Formen explores ad hoc through subtle manipulations within the setup.

Conceptually, the project draws on the human tendency to find patterns in randomness: the dubplates are neither locked nor synced but combined at arbitrary points, moving freely and producing emergent patterns that each listener perceives differently.

All tracks written by Formen. Exceptions are the recordings of "Der Tod ist gross" from Werner Herzog’s "Nosferatu", and the vocals and harmony at 16:30–22:30, which were written and produced by @beatrice-beispiel — merci tuusig!

A Pattern Language of Phasing Turntables - Live at Multi Soft Konstanz

complex structures | rhythmic grooves | minimalism
label owner @paide

Empty Space is an artistic platform based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. We explore the interactions of physical media, their characteristic formal languages, and their modes of functionality. To achieve this, we focus on projects that experiment with various art forms, aesthetics, and crafts. Our goal is to create works of art that challenge conventional modes of production and reception.

To bring each project to life, we collaborate with different artists, blending their distinctive approaches and methods into something new. Depending on the medium, many of our productions are conceived as one-of-a-kind pieces or one-time performances.

Empty Space operates as a non-profit association, with all revenue either supporting the artists or being reinvested in future projects.

New tracks tagged #clicks and cuts