There's a reason why Sébastien Devaud (a.k.a Agoria) has remained among French techno's brightest and longest-burning lights: When Devaud finds himself at a creative crossroads, he chooses to do "something different, always challenging myself to try to make other beats, other sounds." It may be a cliché, but it's a worthy one — and it explains how the 39-year-old Lyon-born producer and DJ has made a two-decade career out of being more than a trusted interpreter of the future sounds of Detroit (the city's electronic music being his first love). He's also collaborated with vocalists such as Peter Murphy and Neneh Cherry, as well as instrumentalists like the pianist Francesco Tristano. Devaud was recently on Skype at his Paris studio, speaking about the seeds of Independence, a new three-song EP of what he calls "shamanic" techno. He's releasing it via Maceo Plex's Ellum Audio, and it's an artistic departure with a story all its own.
It begins with Devaud working on the artist Philippe Parreno's H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS, a summer 2015 multimedia installation for New York's Park Avenue Armory. Devaud's partners on the project were Mikhail Rudy, the classical concert pianist, and Nicolas Becker, a sound designer with a closet full of motion-picture credits for directors such as Christopher Nolan, Danny Boyle and Gaspar Noe, among others. (Both feature on Independence, though Rudy's piano version of the track can be found on the vinyl release only.) Parreno's installation mixed sculpture, staging, film and, of course, music, to create a unique experience in the Armory's enormous Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Devaud's job was to create a sonic bed for Rudy to play over, while also mixing the pianist's recordings and Becker's sonic archive of effects, as the installation's permanent audio texture. He did this by taking "some of Nicolas' sounds, and discovering the melodies behind them. It was a plane, or something from the trees, natural sounds. And I took these organic sounds to make them into digital melodies."
Devaud says the process continued when work on Parreno's piece was done, and Becker "gave me access to his full library of sounds. Working with Nicolas was really for me inspiring — not only working on the show, but from the artistic perception of doing something else, of, 'Let's find another approach of how you can do a track.'"
NPR Music asked Sébastien Devaud to share some additional thoughts on how the new Agoria EP came to be.
1. Independence
I did this track very differently from all the other previous tracks; that's why I called it "Independence." (It's not for political reasons. I'm French, and we always speak about politics [so there's an expectation].) It's meant as a kind of artistic independence. Every time I've played it [in clubs] since December, when the break is coming, you have a few kids who feel the tension; it's like you have "the deliverance." It's a great moment. I like to play it in a little tunnel [of time], during the 15-20 minutes of organic and shamanic trance tension. That's when I play this track. It's very effective, I would say.
2. Independence (Architectural remix)
I'm always open to working with new artists and new remixers. I knew Architectural [Spanish-born producer Juan Rico] because I love his music, and I love the techno purists. It's like the techno track par excellence. So it's like Ben Klock, Marcell Dettmann, these kinds of artists, and it's exactly the kind of sounds they play: proper techno with respect for the legacy. And I like the way he reinterpreted my track.
3. Gravity (feat. Nicolas Becker)
After I did "Independence," I wanted to do a full EP using Nicolas' sounds. I did "Gravity" before "Independence"; it was just a techno track and it missed something, some complement that would really make it a bit different, or a bit more personal. So I had Nicolas listen to it, and we found some sounds and took some voices from his library and added them. We selected some solar songs from the sun [recordings of solar winds] and from space [Morse codes between Earth and some satellites], because Nicolas is recording a lot of things from outer space. Sometimes they are only frequencies, and sometimes they are just like sounds from the sun itself. So that's why I call this track "Gravity," because of all the references of space.
The Independence EP is out now on Ellum Audio.
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