An unstable middle ground has been carved out by these Frenchmen. 4/4 patterns exist, but these can easily dissolve into broken or eradicated beat. Melodies fall and churn, rising then dipping. The catalog traverses living room relaxation and late night destruction.
It rarely happens that I’m stuck for music comparisons. This isn’t bragging, I’ve listened to a lot of different stuff in my life. But there’s something else to it. Nowadays styles are as much being rehashed as they are being revisited. This can be seen in the prolonged return to Acid and House, the second age of Industrial alongside the fascination in reissues. None of these are new ventures but it is pretty tricky to create new paths. The age of Glitch, Electronica and IDM promised something new. Machines were becoming ever more powerful and anyone could make music with a computer, although talent did help. But we’ve seen a snubbing of the laptop artist, people want vintage equipment and synths the size of buses. Or do they? For this reason, with this long loving gaze back over the annals of electronics that has pervaded the public, it is hard to sound, well, original. It is a challenge to release something that sits amongst its contemporaries and is different. It’s difficult. It’s difficult to stump my ability to compare, but it’s not impossible.
I’m late in coming to In Paradisum. The French platform, now active for two years, has managed to hinder my comparison reflex. I managed to catch up with one of the two founders, Guillaume Heuguet and Paul Régimbeau, over a warm keyboard.
Heuguet says that In Paradisum was “born out of a vague, half-conscious desire for some music that didn’t exist yet” adding how the two founders “kind of like to get inspired by “lost paths” in modern music’s past.”
Perhaps the reason the imprint is so hard to pin down is because of its dizzying array of influences. “Extreme metal, doom, sludge and hardcore” are mentioned, Techno, House, Ambient and Drone. But the artists are also teachers. “Qoso’s my rap guide and we exchange some trance inducing jazz records, Low Jack it’s more psychedelic oddities.” But for Heuguet “it’s fair to say that there is no real genre that we embrace as a whole… it’s always some kind of specific and fragile undercurrents.”
When it comes to the release schedule Heuguet tells me “there is a close gang aspect.”
“We also have new artists coming up like Kaumwald (Ernest & Clement), who Somaticae recommended and I met at one of their shows… We also did a tape with Saaad, two guys that Paul met at one of their…now Greg Buffier, half of Saaad, does the guitar on Paul’s live shows.”
Guillaume adds that the “personal relationship allow” the label “to pursue something with an artist… We try not to be just this one stop that helps an artist build his profile, I find it a bit easy and boring.”
There’s a refreshing view on club politics, or club sound politics. Heuguet comments that In Paradisum receives “a lot of very effective techno” that they like but “turn down” because they “want the records to stay interesting for home listening too” and for them “few techno records work both ways.” And there are moments of Techno on the imprint, names like Somaticae and Qoso offering up some heavy duty hitters. But there is also the opposite, slow and melodic Ambience, washed out soundscapes and neo-classical elegance.
In Paradisum is a melting pot, but it barely even resembles a pot; a melting duck? But the label is not out for indigestible experimentation. Instead an unstable middle ground has been carved out by these Frenchmen. 4/4 patterns exist, but these can easily dissolve into broken or eradicated beat. Melodies fall and churn, rising then dipping. The catalog traverses living room relaxation and late night destruction.
For more info about In Paradisum, visit inparadisumrecords.tumblr.com or inparadisum.net.
Download this mix! (Right click and ‘Save link as…’)
Mix Tracklist ::
Yximalloo :: “Uuji”
Severed Heads :: “Rated R”
Si Begg :: “Weird Spirit Control”
Run Dust :: “Jazz Can”
Low Jack :: “IP LP Track 4”
Drexciya :: “Lost Vessel”
Aphex Twin :: “180db_”
Ekman :: “Untitled 2”
Mono Junk :: “Mind”
Factory Floor :: “How You Say (Bookworms remix)”
Rayographs :: “My Critical Mind (Andy Blake remix)”
Ford Foster :: “Shanker In The Side”
Hieroglyphic Being :: “Star Time”
Janek Schaefer :: “Radio 110 FM”
