There's music – and then there's the strange art of making someone desperately want to press play on your record again just after its end.
Over and over, again and again, like an orally repeated story.
Take The Strange Art, by FKCLUB, La Belle's new discovery / latest coup-de-coeur. Analog wizard, producer and multi-instrumentalist Marc Lapeyre invites us to his private screening – of your own private movie.
The Strange Art is your own movie.
Me, for example. I see a train now. It's whistling through a snowy area. Mildly-populed, white/green, rural area in winter. It looks cold, it feels cold. There's a woman sitting in the train. Black long hair, she's like 40. She's sitting there with her daughter, who looks 10 years old more or less. They're both running from something, from someone probably, and I have no clue what they're running from.
The Air-meet-Todd Rundgren vibes make me feel similar to the way you navigate roads in Google Maps' Street View; standing in the train, surrounded by the rails' chugging sound. That Rhodes piano colors everything perfectly. The krautrock vibes make me feel really cold. FKCLUB drummer Antoine Germain's incredible drumming work counterpoints the breathing of the woman.
There's music – and then there's the strange art of making someone desperately want to press play on your record again – because 5 minutes were not enough to get to the end.
Like when you listen to Brian Eno's production work on Bowie's chemical trilogy, your brain starts tapping fingers on the typewriter. And this is your own movie. But every listen is tantalizingly incomplete. You'll have to listen to it again to look further, to become the only one knowing what those two women are running from.
We're really happy to present you The Strange Art's remixers too. Nasser's immense work brings a stomping groove to the table where LCD Soundsystem are eating arpeggios for breakfast. Richard Sen's own movie turns to an evil, shiny, balearic, unmissable remix. In Flagranti play it late-night tale and my train suddenly goes darker and I feel like I really want to chat that woman, who cares about the kid anyway.Dj Steef's script goes magnifically low-tempo and those synths go all around the place, fireworks and stuff.
There's music – and then there's the strange art.