Arnaud Rebotini - French Touch 2.0, in Analog

Arnaud Rebotini is not just a musician, DJ, singer and electronic music composer, but also a renowned producer and co-author of countless projects. Artists of the caliber of Oliver Huntemann, Zen Kei, The Rapture, Tiefschwarz, Noir Desir, Rammstein and, not least, Depeche Mode have hired him for their remixes. But to better understand the story of this still semi-unknown god of techno, it's worth starting from the beginning.

Origins and first steps in death metal

Born in 1970 in the small town of Nancy in north-eastern France, Rebotini took his first steps - probably pushed by his father's tastes - in funk and disco. But the young teenager soon rebelled, choosing the perhaps rather prophetic alias of Zend Avesta and moving toward violent acoustic expressions, veering death-metal with his first noise-grunge band, bearing the hardly unpredictable name of Post Mortum, later to evolve into Swamp.

The influences are clear right from the start: Burzum, Metallica, Mahyem, Lynyrd Skynyrd. This is old-school death metal: angry, screamed music, pushed to trash extremes, with growled vocal virtuosity and apocalyptic, desperate atmospheres. Tracks like "Morbid Desecration", "Unsane" or "Final Chapter" are a good example. It would later be under the name Swamp that the band refined its sound, producing more studied and elaborate pieces such as "Forest Of Sin", "Shiva" and the self-titled "Swamp", surprisingly built around a harrowing female voice.

Today, very little trace remains of all this: online, if you're lucky, you might find a track or two on Myspace, but everything else is now dead history - albeit still a solid starting point for the Rebotini of the future.

The meeting with Ivan Smagghe and the birth of Black Strobe

Life goes on, and Arnaud starts working as a sales clerk at the Parisian CD and vinyl boutique of the English label Rough Trade, now completely vanished, at least from the ville lumiere. And here, like the classic opening of every good friendship story, he happens to meet Ivan Smagghe, at the time a well-known DJ, today recognized as a prophet of third-millennium techno music as well as co-founder of the label Kill The Dj, with whom he will soon form the duo Black Strobe.

Black Strobe, literally "black stroboscope", draw inspiration from - or rather seem to inspire and drive - the English dance and electroclash scene of those years. The track "Me And Madonna", released in 2002, illustrates this approach well: a sparse, repetitive lyric delivered with ostentatious, disenchanted sensuality, all wrapped in techno-dance and synth-pop sounds. A testament to this period is the mini-album Chemical Sweet Girl (Output Records, 2004), which includes, besides the aforementioned "Me And Madonna", six more dance tracks built on drum machine and synthesizers.

Next came the Ep A Remix Selection, released on the Play Loud label (2006) in a limited edition, featuring brilliant, dark-tinged remixes of electro milestones such as "Something To Do" by Depeche Mode, "Like Eating Glass" by Bloc Party and, last but not least, "Keine Lust" by Rammstein.

But first, a step back to '97: it's precisely in that year, as Black Strobe is taking shape, that the filtered house of French Touch is losing ground and seems to be breathing its last. It will be Arnaud and Ivan Smagghe themselves who, with a hypnotic, long, acid and melancholic track aptly titled "Paris Acid City", manage the difficult feat of revitalizing a French Touch sound that was running out of steam, reintroducing house music into Parisian clubs and beyond. The recipe is simple: "Paris Acid City" has a very basic structure, built on spare beats and basslines, a classic early garage-remix electro-music track, with a monotone voice endlessly repeating "Paris Acid City". The same formula, this time a bit more synthesized, would then be applied to the follow-up "Innerstring", leading up to "Italian Fireflies", where a more elaborate structure starts to emerge: Black Strobe appear to be growing, evolving and homing in on their style.

This process of stylistic refinement would, however, lead to some friction, until in 2006 Ivan decided to leave the project, also to pursue the superstar DJ career awaiting him in London, while Arnaud turned what had until then been a simple duo into a full-fledged band, with the arrival of David Shaw on guitar, Bastien Burger on bass and keyboards, and Benjamin Beaulieu on drums. It is with this new line-up that Black Strobe gave birth in 2007 to the album Burn Your Own Church (Playlouderecordings), which explicitly reveals new influences from experimental pop and post-punk industrial acts such as Front 242, Nitzer Ebb and Cabaret Voltaire.

Burning old idols to give birth to a new religion

With Burn Your Own Church, Rebotini seems to almost entirely abandon the simplified, repetitive techno-dance of early Black Strobe, embracing instead more muscular, complex and varied sounds. This idea is well illustrated by the CD's artwork too: the band's name is overlaid with multiple pen strikethroughs, with the album title added just below in crisp, small cursive lettering. It's a 360-degree EP, meant to be listened to from first to last track in the strict sequence proposed.

The first track is an instrumental piece, "Brenn Di Ega Kjerk", the Norwegian translation of "Burn Your Own Church", and it's pure Rebotini-style right away: synthetic sounds and basslines building in a continuous, swirling crescendo, with drums far more combative than in his earlier work, all aimed at conjuring an image tied to cold, dark, almost futuristic metropolitan landscapes.

Next comes "Shining Bright Star", where the slap of bass strings and the powerful sound of the drums are joined by electronic keyboards pushed to the max, trying to carve out space between the electric guitar chords and Arnaud's voice, which this time seems to fully match another icon of electronic pop, namely Dave Gahan - an immediate comparison to Depeche Mode that will resurface in other tracks on the album, such as "Not What You Want", "You Should Be", "Lady 13", "Crave For Speed".

But giving in to easy generalizations would be too risky, as well as out of place. Indeed, with "Girl Next Door" one is left stunned, unexpectedly confronted with a medieval-style ballad in modern dress, with a sweet, delicate rhythm that is at the same time noir and oppressive: a velvety sound that echoes Lynchian atmospheres, psychedelic electro-dark, where sound and voice feel more like a whisper than a scream.

But once again, rushing to classify would be a mistake, because with the next track, "Blood Shot Eyes", Arnaud goes back to screaming his musical power right in your face, and the comparison shifts to entirely different acts from those mentioned before. Here we're deep into violent, furious electronic breakbeat, almost echoing the energetic force of late-'90s Prodigy, with brilliant interludes and pauses built from furious exhortations like "And I Want It To Stop Right Now!". And just when you think you've had enough for one EP, it's actually not over yet, because aside from a few dance tracks like "Buzz, Buzz, Buzz", with "I Am A Man" Black Strobe once again break out of every category, delivering a perfectly ironic rock and roll sound. What you encounter listening to Burn Your Own Church is therefore a complex work, diverse in genres, styles and forms, yet held together by one significant common thread: the Rebotini style. It's also worth noting that tracks like "I Am A Man" have been used in several film and TV productions, such as the 2008 film "Rockenrolla" and the second episode of the TV series "The Walking Dead".

But despite this, and numerous live performances, Black Strobe remain a northern European product, perhaps still too niche to break through internationally.

The long hiatus and solo work

Likely tired and worn out by the tour that had accompanied the release of Burn Your Own Church, Rebotini decides at the end of 2007 to withdraw and take a break. He shuts himself away in the studio, switches off his PC, puts aside the software and all the other plug-ins that, for better or worse, had shaped his production up to that point, and takes the opportunity to bring back to life vintage machines he had collected over the years, such as his TR-808, SH-101, TR-909, TB-303 and Juno 60 - all pieces of gear far too analog for the techno music of that era. But, as Arnaud himself admitted in an interview, "when I found myself in front of my drum machines and synthesizers again, I felt so at ease that it was as if I'd always used them... The pleasure of rediscovering these sounds was a revelation. When you turn on a synthesizer, you're playing with an instrument that's part of the history of music. A PC is still just a machine for sending emails."

This return to his roots would take concrete shape in the album Music Component, which Rebotini made on his own, releasing it on the French label Citizen, the same label behind Vitalic. The album reflects a rediscovery of diodes and transistors, and pays explicit homage to the original philosophy of early techno and the classics of electronic music: long, instrumental, repetitive tracks, powerful and melancholic, built around developing a single basic idea to the point of obsession. One track alone will suffice to illustrate this: "The Swamp Waltz".

Classy tracks that prove techno can still thrive on its own terms outside the dancefloor, and that will earn Rebotini a well-deserved place among the genre's great names, such as Carl Craig, Plastikman or Drexciya, to name just a few.

But Music Component is above all an album that swims against the tide, against sterile saturation, genre confusion, format hybridization, and half-baked ideas. Rebotini gives new body to techno music, but without ever neglecting arrangement and melody, proving not only a deep knowledge of the genre - worth noting here is his active collaboration since 2004 with the Grm (Groupe de recherche musicale), the experimental electroacoustic music lab - but also his skill in creating something new out of something old, staying detached from the chorus of trends of the moment, focused instead on developing, coherently and disinterestedly, his own deeply personal, analog-based vision.

Perhaps only today, now that vintage synthesizers are snapped up on eBay, legendary manufacturers are overhauling their machines to build more efficient ones, and renowned producers openly criticize the creative limits of computer-made music, can we fully grasp just how visionary Rebotini was in chasing his own nostalgia for techno. And so, faced with the unexpected yet telling success of Music Component, just a year later Music Component Rev 2 (Citizens, 2009) takes shape. This new album keeps the original tracklist from its predecessor, but every single track is reworked by expert hands in the field, such as Chloé, Jesper Dahlback, Discodeine, Xaver Naudascher, Martini Bros, Steve Moore and many others. This new version is less a simple remix compilation than a participatory project - a brilliant, original undertaking, a perfect melange of classic techno and new electro trends.

Meanwhile, Rebotini continues to bring side projects to life, such as those he'll release under his old alias Zend Avesta, or Avalanche, or the new Aleph project, plus the 3-track EP Back From Beyond, released again on Play Loud in 2009 with Black Strobe, where his passion for electronic body music and 80s-tinged remixes seems to resurface.

But perhaps the defining, most noteworthy milestone of this whole period will finally come in 2010, with the birth of his own production label: Blackstrobe Records.

Return to religion and new boogie-flavored contaminations

Faced with the success of Music Components and its reworkings, as well as numerous live performances - alone behind his analog machines, and after fully immersing himself once again in the harsh commercial reality of the dancefloor - Rebotini seems to feel the need to return to his own religion, and once again on his own, in 2011, this time on his own label Blackstrobe Records, he releases Someone Give Me Religion.

The album opens with an instrumental track lasting over 10 minutes, titled with neo-romantic flair "The First Thirteen Minutes Of Love": it's ambient music, the kind of ambient that hadn't been heard in years. A long track that ventures between Carl Craig-style sounds and more chill-out spaces, sending a clear message, a warning. It's as if we're being invited to take a deep breath before letting ourselves be carried away by the following 8 tracks, where there's no more time to stop and reflect. What Arnaud conceives this time is a kind of imaginary bridge between Detroit techno and Berlin techno, between Front 242 and Carl Craig, between the surges of trance music and the static pauses of minimal, between 90s production and more contemporary sounds - it's power manifesting itself in the beat, in the pulse that throbs inside every self-respecting club. And even if we don't know who inspired Arnaud's new religion, in Someone Give Me Religion its creeds and dogmas are plain to see.

But by now it's well known that Rebotini is an artist impossible to pin down to a single creed. Still, for his album in the works for 2013, the last thing anyone would expect is a return of Black Strobe in boogie-woogie mode. And confusion immediately sets in, albeit only on the surface. The king of techno - because by now that's what we can call him - seems this time to revive his interest in good old boogie, especially the kind reworked in the early 80s by bands like ZZ Top (retro-futurist and deliberately kitsch - but terribly charming - as in the case of "Eliminator" and "Afterburner", released in 1983 and 1985 respectively).

Techno fans will be stunned listening to his new track previewed on YouTube, "Boogie In Zero Gravity". In the video, surrounded by the other members of Black Strobe, Arnaud seems to have dug out of the closet his dreadful white pointy cowboy boots/moccasins (probably the same ones he wore in the "I Am A Man" video) and performs, with a self-satisfied look on his face - you can almost see him winking at us - a track with a decidedly slowed-down sound, a kind of blues softened by the warmth of a white man's voice. A mix that nonetheless incorporates - and this is the link to the past - electronic elements, a touch of vocoder, synth effects and an obsessive downtempo beat. Rebotini seems intent on seducing us through that nostalgia inherent in every electro music fan who passed through 80s rock before wrecking their kidneys and kneecaps at the various techno raves of the following years. And the sheer pleasure he takes in the endeavor ultimately reveals the secret of his charm: Rebotini is a multifaceted artist, yet simple and sincere, hiding behind a gruff, grumpy façade worthy of Motorhead's Lemmy nothing but a huge enthusiasm for everything he does.

Since 2013 he has turned with some frequency to soundtrack work. Among these, 2022's Occhiali neri stands out. Rebotini steps into Dario Argento's filmography acting as a tailor, ready to stitch together loosely connected scenes, giving a sense of unity to the whole work. The composer carries Argento's gruesome worlds from rock concert halls to discotheques (the title track), preserving both the horror atmospheres and the dancefloor appeal of disco clubs. Rebotini stays true to the electronic music of the 80s and 90s, with nods to other classic soundtracks of the era, from "Nightmare" to "Terminator", "X Files", right up to a few Carpenter-esque moments reminiscent of "Escape from New York", updated to the steady (four-on-the-floor) rhythms of the disco. The most energetic tracks are the ones that clearly stand out in the film, from the title track and its thematic variations to "Serpenti e cacciatori" or "Inseguimento notturno". When the music turns more atmospheric, Rebotini particularly hits the mark in the film's opening scene with "Un'eclissi su Roma".

A nostalgic soundtrack, inevitable in a film by the ever-nostalgic Argento.

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