DEPTH AFFECT

Mesquin EP

download, autres directions in music

This little gem was released on the French netlabel “autres directions in music”, which first and all makes me think about the meaning of “released” and that it is actually quite good to have a label act as a selector in our times of democratised and completely autonomous production of music, i.e. more or less anybody can produce a mp3 with their own music and put it on the internet. (Which is also a good thing. I still love the DIY-idea.) It will be interesting to see, what the future has in store for us, in regard to music production and distribution. I’d prefer a time in which millions of small labels put their music on the web to be downloaded for free, because it’ll take the business out of the music. Which doesn’t mean that producing music can only be a hobby anymore. A little over a hundred years ago, there was no means to store music and there nevertheless were a lot of professional musicians. To be one, will mean that you’ll have to play shows to people. There will still be stars and hypes and fashion-trends, but these will only grow by the democratic choice of the people and mouth-to-mouth-propaganda about websites and netlabels that these artists come from. Or at least, that is my daydream of how the world should be. Maybe in the aftermath of 9/11 and the souped up dangers of free communication (terrorists could use the internet!) things will change enormously and there will be no more free access to the internet. Soon enough some governments, lead by the US-ministry of home defence, will find that only global corporations (i.e. US-corporations) can guarantee the freedom and peacefulness of the internet by closing it down from private use. But I am getting into a whole different story here.

This one is about Depth Affect, who are a French electronic hip hop duo, which sounds as interesting as it seems. Remy Charrier and David Bideau mix heavy beats with all sorts of electronic trickery and good old synthesizers to produce freely flowing hip hop tracks with lots of keys and atmospheres and little vocals. Every track is filled with little noises and sparkling crackles that sound like digital firelights, but also intricate beats. The second of four tracks on this EP, “dialect”, is the one closest to hip hop, due to the rapped vocals or the looped vocals, and therefore closest to abstract hip hop reformers, such as Prefuse 73. The third track, “not forgotten” sounds like a mix of Massive Attack (the big flowing planes of keyboards), Aphex Twin (the a rhythmical breaks in the beats) and The Fall (the spouted vocals mixed into the background) and judging from that, you’ll see there is a lot of different things coming together in one track. The important thing is, though, that the mix sounds good. “mesquin eye”, the opening track, is somewhere in the middle of these two and the EP closes with a remixed version of that track as well, which adds a lot of echoes and spheres and holes to hide in. Melodium, the remixer, is also responsible for the first release on autres directions in music.

There is also a video to “not forgotten” available on the net as well as a link to the band, which will sell you their first demo – “mesquin eye” (16 tracks) – of which four tracks are taken off for this release. Hm, that answers the question of the beginning a little, I guess. There are still more ways open for artists to earn money over the internet, if at first they are able to convince you about their qualities. Also the label itself will send you their releases for 5 Euros ppd., if you don’t want to download, burn, print and cut the cover yourself, and so on. I can live with that. Some capitalism is still necessary and the future will tell us how things work out anyway. In the meantime, check the web at www.autresdirections.net.

P.S.: If you are interested in web-labels, check out Thinner-Records as well.