CD – Raster

The dystopia of Blade Runner, Polaroid colours, neon lights, and the aesthetics of the VHS video recorder (in French Magnétoscope), are the conceptual foundations of the French master’s latest work, released on the raster label. Today’s world began many decades ago and to reflect on our contemporary synthetic reality we don’t require the latest AI technology. Indeed, with Les Immatériaux, Lyotard’s exhibition in Paris in 1985, we already had a clear understanding of how techno-scientific production and mathematical logic were inserting new codes of existence within society. It is no coincidence that the album’s opener, ‘VHS’, pays homage to popular culture, or that in the second track ‘L.A’, we can identify a cybernetic romanticism in the style of Vangelis, an artist who profoundly shaped the futuristic imagination. We always focus on what is changing, as if the future has never arrived or passed. From this perspective, Vigroux’s work is an exercise in retro-futurism, featuring distant, ambient, abstract soundscapes as in ‘Cassette’ and ‘Stream’. The album becomes more tense and cinematic, a collision of different memories and genres, as it reaches its climax. ‘Paris NYC’ is fragmented and experimental, featuring an array of voices infused with a prog-psychedelic feel. The final track, ‘Nuit’, is raw and noisy and wouldn’t be out of place on a dancefloor. Synths, drum machines and rhythms are brought together, reminding us of Vigroux’s previous release Ballades sur lac gelé – this is even more spectacular, a pulsating work of postmodern decadence.

 

Franck Vigroux – Magnetoscope