Bambounou - Orbiting

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  • 22 year-old Jeremy Guindo, AKA Bambounou, is Parisian but, on first contact, you would assume he lives in London. The generalised interest in grimy warehouse techno; the queasy funk synths that recall Ikonika; the chewy drums and fleet bass dabs that echo Hessle Audio (check the synapse-snapping effervescence of "Mass"); his use of dubstep drops in restrained soft-focus. Orbiting repeatedly sounds like the work of a whizz-kid producer riding UK bass music's creative entropy. However, Guindo is no slavish acolyte. He loves dubstep and UK funky. But no sooner have you noted "Capsule Process" (all fluttering, percussive arrhythmia, ambient pads and lurching bass) as a sonic cousin of Zomby's spare vignettes, than Guindo is turning this notion of Anglo-French exchange on its head. As well as bass music, he adores African percussion and Drexciya (see "EX06"), Dance Mania and that ghetto-footwork tradition, as well as more orthodox house music. All of which he channels in interesting, off-kilter ways. Either he doesn't understand how to replicate his source material or he is deliberately skewering it. Either way, even at his most derivative, Guindo is incapable of straight pastiche. The key track is the juke-inspired collaboration with fellow Parisian producer French Fries, "Let Me Get," a bizarre amalgam of plaintive piano breakdowns from mid-'90s New York vocal house, Magnetic Man's big-stage melodrama, DJ Assault and a glossy hip-hop ballad. It is that improbable thing: a sad song with a bloke repeatedly shouting "let me get that ass," over the top of it. Only "Data," an avowed "techno tool" written on a plane to Berlin, really goes where you expect it to. All knife-grinding textures and gradually emerging bleeps, it is the kind of tightly compressed, machine-funk bomb that Ben Klock might drop. Little wonder that Modeselektor love Bambounou. All this is right up their irreverently eclectic strasse. Some of Orbiting still sounds a little sketchy, like a bunch of good ideas that have yet to coagulate into fully-rounded, purposeful bangers, but clearly Jeremy Guindo is a real maverick talent.
  • Tracklist
      01. Hyper 02. Any Other Service 03. Mass 04. Data 05. Capsule Process 06. EX06 07. Let Me Get feat. French Fries 08. Off the Motion 09. Great Escape 10. Challenger 11. Splaz 12. Orbiting
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