Date de sortie : 7 mars 2020
Kamînar Records
Catalog # : NAR 3

Sounds like : Young Bonobo having a jam with Hugo Kant

#triphop #downtempo #instrumental

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Rodalquilar, always

This piece was born in March 2017, while I was staying at a friend’s house in the valley of Rodalquilar, Andalusia (Spain).

All the pictures composing the cover art where taken during my three stays there in Dec 2016, Spring 2017 and April 2019.

In Spring 2017, I was there for a month while my friend went on holidays. I took care of Max, his dog, and worked in the garden.

This was one of the highlights of my life. Enjoying recharging solitude, not having to worry about a thing, getting sunlight every single day, and being so close to the beautiful sea facing Africa, in such a dreamy place.

That’s when I created the Rodalquilar Sessions EP that came out in Fall that same year, as the first release on the Swiss label Diffract Records.

For that collaborative project I had Belgian artist Pierre Citron come over for a week.

Below you can enjoy some views of Rodalquilar (as well as Ardèche in France and other places in Spain), shot by Eddy Allamand (label founder-manager at Diffract Records) during our 2019 road trip.

When Pierre Citron left, I did some other jams on my own, also using the guitar I had at hands, plus the usual setup with Ableton Live and my samples library.

How So Gambia was the second of these jams, and the most interesting one. I didn’t work on the others again, so far, though I remember there might be some other interesting ideas to take further.

Slices of life

Following the groove of the main rhythmic loop – which, I’ll be honest, is a pre-made pattern from Maschine – I layered many samples of my own that I recorded with my Pocketrak Yamaha PR7.

Slices of life, as I like to call them.

The most prominent sample is the laugh of my younger niece. The recording was made when she was 5, going nut by herself repeating to me, like a protest : Tombe sur ton ordinateur! Tombe sur ton ordinateur! which means “Fall on your computer! Fall on your computer!” She’s so creative. We might end up making music together.

She got hiccups in the mean time, and just kept laughing.

I also used recordings of a big dog eating a huge bone, a mother in the train realising her child made too much pictures with her smartphone, and apparently not being happy about it.

The very last things I added were bits of vocal messages from two different girls. I just love their voice and could be listening to them all day.

One of them is a friend I think I’d be happy to date till the end of my life and spend most of my time making her laugh. I see my future self listening back to this song and recollecting the relaxing memories of her, and running an alternative life scenario in which we did end up together, going through so many great adventures.

I never met the other girl. She’s a good friend of a girl I know who featured in a previous music video as an actor. I reached out to ask questions about escape games, as she works in that field. That was an excuse to talk to her cause I think she’s cute, even though I was interested about escape games and had real questions to ask. At that time she just left for months of travel in South America and I moved from Geneva then, so I didn’t follow up with the conversation.

Unfinished business

I finished a first version of How So Gambia in the Summer of 2017, but wasn’t quite satisfied. There was something missing to make it a proper tune. I good friend of mine agreed that it was very good, but kind of teasing, and leaving him unsatisfied at the end. At that time I probably hurried because I set myself to release a new track every week.

So I just let it rest for a long while, and eventually resolved it by the end of 2019, with great satisfaction.

What about the title?

There’s a story about the title as well. I was waiting for my train at the station of Agrigento in Sicily, during the Summer of 2016. There was this African youth waiting as well, and we started to chat, I showed him a music video I’ve just made and I asked him to write something in my notebook. Just anything.

So he wrote “HOW SO GAMBIA”, which to me doesn’t mean anything. I think it sounds great though.

I guess he’s from Gambia and he was thinking about his homeland in that moment.

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