BAMBOUNOU - Orbiting

Jeremy Guindo, aka Bambounou, is a mere twenty-two-year-old kid. He claims to love Chicago house and French-touch, and for this debut album he admits to having drawn inspiration from Dubstep and the most frazzled strains of UK funky, even the techno of Drexciya. He also states he drew inspiration from Nintendo sounds and the spacey atmospheres of early video games.

In short, the kid seems to have a clear sense of direction when it comes to shaping his exhilarating sonic creature, the latest in the contemporary electronic microcosm. And who better to welcome this charming Parisian producer - with his sound as alien as it is reckless - with open arms than 50 Weapons, the label run by those two pranksters Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary, aka Modeselektor.

“Orbiting” is indeed a decidedly anomalous work. It isn't broken-beat, even if in places it seems to edge toward jagged dark rhythms, and it isn't Dubstep, nor is it UK funky, even if the lurching drive of “Mass” brings something similar to mind. What's certain is that it's a record that stands outside both today's electronic contexts and beyond, packed with grooves ready to be torn apart at the first change of direction. It's also pure entertainment, sheer messing about in a 2-step vein (“Any Other Service”), or spacey contortion (“Off The Motion”), proto-rap obsessiveness (“Let Me Get”, cut together with his friend Valentino Canzani, better known as French Fries), and so much more besides.

But “Orbiting” is above all a jumble of sounds fired off pretty much at random to provoke effects that aren't exactly well defined. On every track, Guindo tries at all costs to pull out the alienating element, the pirouette of the moment, forgoing any kind of consistent production identity. The result is repeatedly unsettling but lacking in incisiveness. An excessive eagerness to cram together wildly disparate elements prevails.

The idea of conjuring a spatial vortex with every edit adds nothing and only highlights a glaring production immaturity. While he does take a certain fastidious care over individual sounds (some of them truly beautiful), sprinkling in his restless little keyboard here and there ("Splaz"), Bambounou still has a long way to go. He'll need to get his ideas in order a bit before he can actually leave any tangible mark. For now we'll settle for a handful of small electronic flourishes, hoping that in the future they manage to blossom with more conviction.

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04/11/2012