Bérangère Maximin makes spacious colorful music. A sonic sculptress of exception, she started out in an academic environment with an electroacoustic training, and has gradually incorporated the contribution of post-punk, dub and sound art experiments to develop a hyper-personal style, producing sensual, hypnotic, sultry pieces with immediate impact. BM moved from her native Reunion Island to France when she was fifteen, and studied with the musique concrète composer Denis Dufour (a member of the famous GRM and a pupil of Pierre Schaeffer). Her first album came out on John Zorn’s label Tzadik.

Bérangère naturally drew inspiration from composers such as François Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Eliane Radigue and has also listened to a lot of early electronica and glitch music. She went on to develop her own approach, both to studio recording and to live performance, taking in the experiences gathered in the course of her collaborations with the likes of Fennesz, Rhys Chatham, Richard Pinhas and Fred Frith (with whom she played several duet concerts).

Dangerous Orbits is Bérangère Maximin’s fourth album, and her first for Crammed Discs’ Made To Measure series.

Bérangère Maximin’s music engages the listener in considerations of space and textures. Her new album, Dangerous Orbits takes us in a constant sway between lightness and drama. Curving filigree voices, odd melodies, powerful sub-bass, spacious drones, oceanic vibrations and orchestral bursts flow with evident motricity into a world which is together multidimensional, effusive and raw.

A master manipulator of space and distance… that sounds like Maximin sucking the listener’s brain up through a straw. - Rock-A-Rolla.

Raised on the native land of her mother, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean with an active volcano surrounded by wild beaches, Bérangère Maximin moved from Reunion Island to the Metropolis when she was just fifteen. From that time, she’s kept a very special relationship with her environment which shows in prismatic plating of sounds she interperses with melodic rashes, her playing with laptops and midi controllers delivering what she likes to call her digital chimeras.

The electroacoustic composer has produced a very personal repertoire marked by encounters that have inspired her writing in various degrees. She studied under the musique concrète composer Denis Dufour and then came to the attention of John Zorn who released Tant Que Les Heures Passent on his label (2008). In the meantime she crossed paths with the Ukrainian artist Anton Yakutovych who contributed with conceiving her album sleeves and an evolutive series of portraits until his death last year. Taking inspiration from the New York improv scene and her European tour in solo and in duo with the likes of Fred Frith, Fennesz or Rhys Chatham, her work then developed towards live practice which then led her to compose No One Is An Island, the second and only collaborative album so far, a very different output to her debut and the confirmation of the respect Bérangère had started to get from established artists. 

Bérangère Maximin’s personality gives her a foundation for taking laptop music somewhere different, a meticulous producer with great resource and tenacity. The listener could get lost in minimalist backdrop and prominent bass, which I find really close to the spirit of the likes of King Tubby - The Quietus.

The minimal series Infinitesimal (2013) describes a slow transformation, a deep introspection far removed from the convention of the genre. She seems to be feeding her feelings directly into morphological sounds, suffocating bed of sighs, dub effects, metallic scrapings, very special imaginary areas where only matters the physicality of the moment. 

Slowly, Infinitesimal establishes internal logic, matching the way things make sense in your head even if you can’t explain them. - Pitchfork.

Working on this new project seemed to have opened a door, a new trajectory leading to even more unfamiliar and wider spaces. She carried on recording straight away, which was fueled by some inner necessity, ending with five pieces that keep this particular warm and organic feel with an obvious sense of detail and maturity, a place to really get lost in. 

No wonder Dangerous Orbits has found a home into Crammed Discs’ Made To Measure series among great hard to categorized characters as Jozef Van Wissem, Steven Brown, John Lurie, Arto Lindsay, Harold Budd, Brion Gysin, Aksak Maboul or Hector Zazou. 

Album Release 25 september, Crammed/[PIAS].

Release concert Botanique Bxl : 10 november.

In her new album Maïa Vidal offers a personal take on an eternal subject matter: the love story, with all its fluctuations and shifts, its ebb and flow: falling in lov e, being in love, falling out of love. Overflowing with her trademark, soaring melodies, this is the young American singer/songwriter/musician’s most accomplished album to date, an electronic pop opus which was brilliantly produced by Maïa herself, co-produced by Giuliano Cobelli, and mixed by Van Rivers (Glasser, Fever Ray, Matthew Dear).

Maïa played most of the instruments (keyboards, autoharp, violin, guitar, beat programming), with contributions by Giuliano Cobelli (trumpet, per cussion, beats). All these ingredients, alongside Maïa’s moving, humourous and distinctive lyrics, contribute to making You’re The Waves a unique, sensual and fresh album.

* about MAÏA VIDAL

Her debut album God Is My Bike came out in Europe in November 2011. It was nominated for the IMPALA Awards (the pan-European, Indie Album of the Year award), alongside albums by Sigur Ros, Little Dragon and Adele.

After successfully translating her verbal imagery into visuals in her self-directed videos for tracks such as Poison and Alphabet of my Phobias, Maïa collaborated with director Joana Colomar to create a stunning video for Follow Me, loosely based on a Brothers Grimm tale. The video was nominated for Best Pop Video at the UK Music Video Awards (alongside videos by Lana del Rey, Rihanna and Justice). The video and the fan audio uploads of the song Follow Me have now garnered over 1.5 million views on YouTube.

Multi-platinum selling, Grammy Award-winning recording artist Dave Gahan, along with musical partner Soulsavers, will release a new album October 23rd. Entitled ‘Angels & Ghosts’, this is the collaborators’ second album, following their critically-acclaimed 2012 release ‘The Light the Dead See’. The album will be released in digital, as well as physical CD and vinyl formats, worldwide on October 23rd through Columbia Records. The “utterly riveting” album boasts nine original tracks, all written by Dave Gahan & Soulsavers.

An evolution from their first album, ‘Angels & Ghosts’ proves to be a markedly stronger and more hard-hitting body of work. Listeners can expect to be led through an aural mix of dark, brooding sounds, elements inspired by gospel and blues, and the stark beauty that has become a signature of Dave and Soulsavers’ works. Dave Gahan’s emotionally powerful voice has never sounded better, and drives the album forward over a landscape of meticulously crafted instrumentation.

A transatlantic collaboration, the writing process started with Dave Gahan and Soulsavers’ Rich Machin exchanging demos and ideas from their respective studios in lower Manhattan and rural England. They then recorded the album with additional musicians in studios around the world, including classic locations such as Sunset Sound in Los Angeles and Electric Lady in New York. The end result is a vibrant, live-sounding album, and proof of the “instant and obvious fit” Machin felt writing with Gahan.

To fully showcase the powerful, live nature of the album, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers will bring the project to life in a series of six special shows in iconic, intimate venues across the US and Europe. Starting October 19th at the first show in Los Angeles, Dave Gahan & Soulsavers will perform as a ten-piece band, with shows in New York, London, Berlin, Paris and Milan to follow. Tickets for all shows will go on sale September 18th and select shows will be broadcast and streamed for fans worldwide. Full dates and venues are listed below.

 Dave Gahan & Soulsavers performance dates:

October 26th London, UK Shepherds Bush Empire

October 30th Berlin, DE Tempodrom

November 2nd Paris, FR La Cigale

November 4th Milan, IT Fabrique

Roseau, AKA Kerry Leatham, has made the brilliant debut album she’s long promised to. As well as appearances on acclaimed records from Lapalux and DELS, an inclusion on Bonobo’s Late Night Tales, and tours with Lianne La Havas, Lucy Rose and Laura Mvula, Leatham’s music has been featured on Grey’s Anatomy and Adulthood. Add in her one million plus plays on YouTube and Spotify, a modelling campaign for Adidas Originals and being tipped by Shura; anticipation for her debut album as Roseau has been running high. Finally, at the end of June 2015, Big Dada is proud to announce the release of the album, Salt.

Marrying stories about modern life both rubbish and wondrous to bold, chiming, futuristic pop, Salt is a stunning record. Leatham’s talent for writing, her purposeful experiments and her mastery of several instruments as well as electronic production techniques, add up to a powerful arsenal. Leatham learned to write songs and perform uncanny harmonies long before she mastered Logic and laptops, and this finely honed ability sees her shine out from the pack.

Written and recorded in the space and quiet of the Essex countryside, Salt contains music both elemental and intimate. Its sonics were inspired by a chance exploration of a giant abandoned warehouse beside a walk Leatham loves. Finding herself in a vast space with only an old car tyre, an extinguished bonfire and some bottles and sticks, she screamed, threw bottles, sang, stomped, hit the tyre with the sticks, and made as many sounds as possible – then she came back, day after day, to record them.

These sounds form the backbone of Salt’s bewitching sonics, colouring the album with a powerful atmosphere, and providing the perfect backdrop for Leatham’s unique voice and lyrics. The album’s songs contain powerful themes; about the devastation of first heartbreak, the aftermath and numbness; about belonging, or not; and about self-confidence and its absence. Leatham’s love of stories goes back to the song-tales her grandfather sang her when she was a child. Salt is full of stories, whether about broken hearts and yearning (Salt,) troubled nights out (New Glass,) or the wired compulsion of a road trip (Florida,) Leatham enhances the natural beauty of her voice with her experimental harmonies and pitch shifts, adding texture to an album that’s casually littered with infectious hooks.

After starting work on the album at her parents’ house, she brought in Dogtanion, her friend and former Tape Club labelmate, for a fresh set of ears. The pair set about writing and recording in Red Bull’s studios, and Leatham soon roped in Jacob Welsh from The Hics and Mark Rainbow from Laurel Collective to help. After the bulk of the writing and recording was complete, she returned to her family home to tailor and tweak, putting the final production touches to her astonishing debut.

Salt is British music from the leftfield at its best: experimental but welcoming, deep but utterly addictive.

Biog:

Roseau, AKA Kerry Leatham, has songwriting in her blood. Born in Colchester in 1985 to a Dominican Father (her nom de guerre is taken from the Caribbean island’s capital) and a Northern Irish mother, her grandfather used to improvise story-songs to Leatham and her sister as toddlers. This was an experience which she recalls as crucial in forming her love of songs, lyrics, and music that tells a story. Her debut album, Salt, is full of stories, drawing the listener in to tales of love – lived, lost or remembered – and fragmentary snapshots of modern life both rubbish and wondrous. Vivid images abound of nights out, road trips, longing and regret – all related via her bold, chiming, futuristic electronic pop.

Leatham began making up her own songs as a child, roping in her sister to sing harmonies. Harmony, and what she describes as ‘vocal blending,’ has fascinated her as long for as she can remember – a fact that goes some way to explaining her glorious, defamiliarising mastery of the technique on Salt. She began practising with a basic tape recorder as a child, upgrading to a Zoom MRS-802 digital multitrack when she turned 16. It was this machine’s greater capability for layered vocals that really gave her experiments purpose.

Having abandoned her first guitar shortly after acquiring it as an eight year old, Kerry was inspired by a friend to pick it up again as a teenager. The combination of the instrument and her Zoom allowed her to begin writing demos and playing local gigs, and shortly afterwards she attracted the attention of the manager she still has today, one Kwame Kwaten (Laura Mvula, Shola Ama and formerly of D – Influence). An equally long term working relationship began soon after that, with Will Evans of Tape Club Records. He released her first music, and exposed her to the collective of artists around his label, who would go on to become friends and inspirations.

2008 saw Leatham make an important breakthrough in terms of her working method. A laptop, a copy of Logic, and many YouTube tutorials took her music widescreen, combining a new, electronic sound with the songwriting approach of her folksy, acoustic roots. That firm grounding in songwriting is what sets Roseau apart from the electronic pack: She knows how to write a song, not just make a beat.

Leatham’s startling use of vocals conjures an enveloping beauty and is often layered amongst stunning harmony and bewitching pitch bending soon got noticed. There were some early syncs in the form Greys Anatomy, Adulthood and ‘4,3,2,1’ and she also caught the attraction of up-and-comers Lapalux and DELS, whose albums she’s appeared on. Her collaborative project “Peter & Kerry” was championed by Bonobo (he included ‘One Thing’ on his Late Night Tales album), toured with Lianne La Havas, Lucy Rose and Laura Mvula and also garnered +1 million streams on both YouTube and Spotify. An Adidas Originals advert featuring Leatham modelling followed. Big Dada signed Roseau in 2013. 

Salt, like most of her music, was written in the space and quiet of the Essex countryside. Perhaps this explains its enchanting, unusual melding of the intimate and the elemental. So might her musical influences, including artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Soul II Soul, Fleetwood Mac, Grizzly Bear and Tune-Yards - names which go some way to illustrating the calibre of Roseau herself, and her incredible debut album.

Title: Salt

Tracklist:

Salt

Kids and Drunks

New Glass

See You Soon

Florida

Grab

Hot Box

Accelerate

You Don’t Know

Alright

Lunch

www.facebook.com/roseauofficial

ELOQUENCE - The Total Works is the definitive compilation of ex-Kraftwerk percussionist Wolfgang Flür’s electronic pop output from 2002 to the present day. As the ex electro-drummer of German electronic legends Kraftwerk, Flür, with his then musical partner Florian Schneider, developed the world’s first electric drum pads board in 1973 for their recordings and stage performances.