Pollution Opera - s/t
Cat. Nr: DN027
Format: DL / LP
Release Date: April 24, 2024
Buy / stream: dansenoire.ffm.to/PollutionOpera

Elvin Brandhi and Nadah El Shazly refuse to turn away from the horror. The intercontinental duo’s Pollution Opera album is an uncompromising futurist depiction of our disfigured, dystopian, and dying reality. Facing hell in full defiance, the experimental noise album catapults itself through a volatile compound of breathless shouts, screams, and screeches, in collision with vocal samples, environmental recordings, and acousmatic sounds. Ten tracks cover the spectrum of electroacoustic fragments and vocalizations, treacherously suspended between the roar of engines and synth distortion, of evocative intonations or guttural retching.

First conceived in 2020, Pollution Opera bubbled up organically from a first tandem motorbike ride through El Shazly’s hometown of Cairo. Singing and screaming through the second-loudest city in the world, Brandhi and Shazly found the extreme noise pollution served as catharsis from the suffocating smog that surrounded them. They then took these sonic specimens into studios across years and countries—from the initial recording and sessions in Egypt to Uganda, where their so-called “cacophony carbon orchestra” would carry into simultaneous but separate residencies at Nyege Nyege in Kampala. There, Brandhi and Shazly reprised the role of the motorbike as their “stage,” in a city where motorbikes are the main mode of public transport. They then developed a live A/V performance from video material captured by Arno Mery, collected from their travels, and reworked by Egyptian artist Omar El Sadek during Banlieues Bleues Festival 2023 in France.

The result is what the artists themselves describe as “an uncompromising world-spew, a shameless alloy of love and hate.” Haptic knocking, barking dogs, and human growls trample El Shazly’s famously evocative Egyptian singing style on “CRÎi Me A River.” Breathless vocal cut-ups and samples are bulldozed by arrhythmic acoustic percussion on “Danse Le Flou.” There are moments of respite within all the chaos, however, whether in the heavily pitched, Auto-Tuned opening of “Pollute Bold” or the wonderfully melodic closer of “Crisp Heart”—its derelict rhythmic thrust giving a listener something to dance about.

Both artists lend their unique positioning and idiosyncrasies to Pollution Opera, whether it’s in artist, vocalist, and musician Brandhi’s avant-garde noise music pedigree as both a solo artist and member of father-daughter duo Yeah You, or
singer, composer, and producer El Shazly’s hybrid catalogue combining electronic music with contemporary classical. Together, in asking the question of what a postmodern opera might sound like, the duo offer their existential answer in the true spirit of the often playful and ironic philosophical position by offering no answer at all.

Voice & electronics: Elvin Brandhi & Nadah El Shazly
Violin on ‘Crisp Heart’: Ocen James
Soprano on ‘Attention’: Marie Requa Gailey

Artwork by Omar El Sadek & Niels Wehrspann
Mastering by Rashad Becker

Pollution Opera

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Pollution Opera - Tusker Light

emma dj - Lay2g
Cat. Nr: DN028
Format: DL
Release Date: June 7 2024
Buy / stream: dansenoire.ffm.to/Lay2g

Emma dj doesn't give much away when it comes to his music. Twelve effortless stabs at post-bloghouse electronics brings the Paris-based, Finnish producer’s oeuvre out of the trap torpor of recent releases on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label, into the ecstatic crush of a world in chaos with the Lay2g LP on Danse Noire. Looking back at the late-2000s, early-2010s collision of the club and the stage, the album beckons to another era. It’s one of warehouse bands and indie sleaze, dance punk and industrial noise; a turn-of-the-millennium time where youth culture was rife with an after-9/11 nihilism so potent that an electro-drone band with a name like “Fuck Buttons” could be part of an Olympic opening ceremony.

Lay2g’s direct and dance-floor-friendly tracks with meaningless titles gleefully bump up against each other, whether in the crumbling industrial force of “I Fuck With Lies” or the propulsive gabber tempo of “Kd9.” It’s inspired by Emma’s early music education through hype.fm music charts and Dim Mak Records, with its echoes of Atari Teenage Riot’s digital hardcore or The Bloody Beetroots’ hoover synths. Crunchy, distorted, subs prop up the epic organ patches and math-y rhythmic structures of “RR.dkn.” A lumbering bass on “bQosYe” follows the lead of shattered top-end breakbeats and a syncopated vocal cut-up.

Managing the pain of contemporary reality with a sense of humor and humility is fundamental to the Nordic artist’s output, whether it’s in the wobbly subs of 2019’s Support Your Local Enemies or the offhand titling of 2023’s follow-up to Godrime, g0drm2. Meanwhile, Lay2g is a powerful, lightly-sardonic signpost in the no wave and mutant disco continuum, and a welcome harbinger of Paris’ deeply buried underground as it rears its uninhibited head.

Photo by Evgenia Nirka
Design by Niels Wehrspann
Mastering by Rashad Becker

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