Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Mr Coquedeux - 1983 - EP Review

The world of French house is by now legendary. The music created by bands like Daft Punk, Justice and SebastiAn define a huge part of modern music today. They led an electro renaissance, brought back disco and it could be argued sparked the EDM revolution we see today.  

Despite these successes French house has been quiet in recent years. Daft Punk almost abandoned French house with it being just one of the many types of music present on their triumphant “Random Access Memories”, Justice has been anonymous since their last album “Audio,Video,Disco” disappointed and there has been very little for fans of this genre to get excited over.

One of the reasons for this is certainly due to the high concentration of releases. Being the most popular electronic genre at the advent of the internet age has led to an incredible amount of saturation being felt in the market. Finding the next innovators in a genre can be incredibly difficult when there are seemingly limitless “Edgy” electro remixes of rock songs.

I fear that Mr Coquedeux may be caught up in this. The 2 original tracks on this EP are filled with sparkling production. The songs sound really crisp and the samples are well handled. On the first track on the EP also entitled “1983” The hooks hit impressively well and there is a great groove to the track.  I do however have some scepticism. The volume drops seem kind of clunky and although a stylistic choice I felt the sample from the film “Purple Rain” added little.

The second track “Flamboyant Twist” is my favoured of the two. I can really get behind the rhythms it is putting out and the clipping of the sound on this track sounds a lot more suitable and better placed to me than in the previous track. Incredibly danceable, the progression is nice with the inclusion of the cymbals being exciting and feeling far more like an actual part of the song rather than just a tool to drive the song like so much percussion does.

I am really impressed with Mr Coquedeux. I hope he manages to improve and incorporates some new ideas to forge his own unique sound as one of my main criticisms of him would be the lack of anything really new. However I would still certainly recommend this song and would encourage you to support him, listen to this EP and look out for more from him in the future.

Dominic Allan.


You can listen to the EP here: https://soundcloud.com/fluctus-records/sets/1983ep 


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