Fabien Robbe + Julien Palomo
Feeling for the Latch
7 track album, released July 10, 2021
"Fabien Robbe and myself have been involved in several projects together since 2015, but this is our formal debut as a duo.
It began as good, clean fun. Fabien piled up gear in his van and drove all the way from Brittany to my blessed shack in the suburbs of Paris, by then home of Improvising Beings. We assembled a monster electronic studio for a few days. I will now list the instruments to get rid of that matter: ARP 2600, ARP Sequencer, EMS Synthi E, Farfisa VIP 233, Kurzweil K-2500, Korg MS 10, Korg Wavestation, Solina String Ensemble, Waldorf Microwave XT. I spare you the list of eurorack modules, effects and controllers.
Instinctively, we arranged it in an ecosystem where any instrument would respond to impulses from other instruments, rather than an orchestral color palette of varied sounds, making it difficult to recognize who did what, making sure interaction would be unavoidable. Bar a few leads distinctly Fabien's, the playing was symbiotic.
To maintain a sense of order, we decided early on that we would anchor the project around melodic and rhytmic elements, not necessarily of the experimental kind. We also drew from the two concepts of the drone we are familiar with: Fabien's use thereof in traditional folk music, and my studies of, notably, Eliane Radigue's methods. Well, we poured everything we knew in this album, including a bit of aggressive free improv. Don't worry, it's tucked away somewhere you don't expect it, it'll be gone before you realize. We didn't want to be hampered by any consideration such as 'where are we going'. This is pretty much our 'Sgt. Peppers', we joked. For me, it's a first. I've been around challenging sounds more often than not. Fabien encouraged me to somewhat... entertain you, for a change..." --J.Palomo, July 2021
