Track By Track: La Fraicheur – Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

 
Music

Very few are welcomed into the studios of Underground Resistance and Mike Banks… La Fraicheur is a resident at Wilde Renate and is set to release a new album on the 22nd of June next month on InFiné. The nine track album was recorded in the Detroit based studio which has acted as a home to many a great producer and musician across decades. The album has been described as political in parts and features an array of spoken word segments including speech from the Black Panther’s Angela Davis. Cinematic in parts there are elements built for the dancefloor and abstract soundscapes which allow for deep thought and self reflection. 

We invited her to take us through the breadth of the record in full as she highlights the intricacies of each track. 

See below: 

Renegade 

Renegade would float in a Deep Dark Purple and it wouldn’t be associated with any season particularly as it is an intergalactic “roadtrip” track outside of the revolution of our planet around our sun and the seasons that come with it. I had two references in mind when I came up with the direction I wanted to try with Renegade : Albator’s androgynous space pirate anime character I was obsessed with as a tomboy queer kid and french duo Zombie Zombie’s album “A Land For Renegades “ for its epic eerie vibe that always makes me want to go on a roadtrip in the desert. I wanted to imagine what Albator’s roadtrip jam would be, flying across space and that’s how I imagine the track being enjoyed the best. 

Tirana 

Tirana is a “Black Light” Blue track that goes with muggy summer warehouse raves. The first sounds from this track, the eerie bells from the beginning and the bassline, came to me in Valparaiso, when I came back home from dancing at a party in a former factory, one of the first places I ever played at in Chile. The track changed a lot from that initial draft but the spirit is the same and that’s where it’s meant to be enjoyed the best. A dirty rave only lit by black light. 

The Movements 

I guess The Movements has to be either Red or Green, colors associated with revolutions, whether from the angle of the struggle, the violence or the hope. Since we already got Green and Red then we might just add Black and White and mirror the flag of Palestine. There’s no season associated with this track since, as the sample states “freedom is a constant struggle” so it’s a track for all year long, every single day. The inspiration for this track comes from an interview of Angela Davis with Amy Goodman for Democracy Now that elaborates on Intersectionality, which is to me, the most relevant, powerful and contemporary way of addressing all types of discrimination policies and fighting them. The best situation to listen to this track is in your shower in the morning to get you fired up for another day of activism, at a protest blaring from the speakers, or at any club it could be played, helping people connect the dots, as they dance. 

Gone 

Gone is a Grayish Blue, like a heavy threatening sky or an angry ocean. It’s a track that feels like the fall. Gone is a track about grief and loss, that nightmarish roller coaster of feelings you go through when you lose someone and you start realising there is no way back. Gone forever. The anger rolling in, the infuriating frustration, the lingering melancholy, the crushing injustice, the need to quickly grow out of it all, in order to both become a support system to others going through the same and to move on yourself with your life, which doesn’t stop to give you time to grieve. I still haven’t listened to Gone watching the ocean break on Brittany’s coastal cliffs on a stormy day, but that’s where I’d imagine the track soars to the next level. 

Morgan, La Nuit 

Morgan, La Nuit is the warm yellow color of the light of a low bedside lamp. It is the counterpoint to Gone. Also closely linked to loss, this track was meant as a lullaby to help me go to sleep in moments you’re overwhelmed with too much suffocating grief. The best place to listen to Morgan, La Nuit, is in bed, looking at the ceiling. 

The New Is Not Born Yet 

This track is definitely Green. For life, for hope, for new beginnings. It’s a track to spark the energy to move things forward and there’s no season for that, there’s only right now, always. The track was inspired by an interview of Italian political researcher and activist Lorenzo Marcili by journalist Sonali Kolhatkar in reaction to the Hamburg G20 summit 2017. It is meant both as a – hopefully both complete and accessible – lay out of the economical and political mechanisms at work in the world today, and a call for action. None of my political tracks are just about pointing fingers at fucked up situations, it’s not just about blaming, it’s important to me that they all include a hopeful angle highlighting that solutions can be found if we try to find them then work and fight for them. The ideal setting? The next G20 summit 2018, happening at the end of November in Buenos Aires!! 

Eaux Troubles 

I guess Eaux Troubles should be a Dark Muddy Blue, like what it’s titled after (murky cloudy waters) and it’s definitely a winter track. Or at least I associate it with a dark club environment. It’s a track meant for all my hazy dancers floating on ketamine. It’s a track with the drive, in the bassline, doubled kick and rhythmic structure, to keep those fragile creatures standing and dancing while at the same time allowing them to lose themselves in the freeform hard- to-grasp ethereal melody. Best situation to enjoy it? Berghain on a Sunday evening. 

Limb By Limb 

Limb by Limb goes from Light Pink to Dark Brown and like the other political tracks, there’s no season attached to it, because discrimination is a daily struggle and the fight against it a daily hustle that knows no break. The inspiration comes from a dialogue between scholars Sara M. Acevedo and Dr. Alka Arora, deconstructing the idea of the “natural” in relation to race, body, gender, sexuality, religion and capitalism. Listen to it with headphones, to really focus on the content, slightly sonically distorted to blur the “natural” lines. 

Plant 21 

Plant 21 is Pitch Black from dancing to it with your eyes closed. It’s linked to summer for me as i field-recorded all its sounds during my artist residency at UR studios in Detroit last summer. I spent a lot of time wandering around the city recording in abandoned houses and decaying factories and that’s what came out of it. I wanted to come up with a sound-design focused slow burner of a track to dance losing yourself in the variety of metallic yet rendered organic, enveloping sounds, every human possibly imagining a different source and narrative around it. Best situations to listen to it is any club it will be played at. 


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