CHAFIK CHENNOUF - FERROEQUINOLOGIE

Chafik Chennouf - Dual Aspect (OPAL114) released October 31st 2017
https://opaltapes.bandcamp.com/album/dual-aspect

Music : Chafik Chennouf
Direction / Design / Animation : Thomas de Rijk - Thomasderijk.biz
Programming / Additional Effects : Enrique Arce Gutierrez

Made possible by TAXfonds

Six track EP of berzerk, often downright scary new music from Chafik Chennouf (Leyla Records) with the “Ferrorequinologie" track absorbed and remixed by Lucy, Mondkopf and Katsunori Sawa respectively.

The lumbering death drops of “Ferroequinologie" set stage for an piece of maximalism against a pure black background. The sample, originally taken from The Ha Dance by Masters at Work is ubiquitous with ballroom music and the dancing of vogue/dramatics. Chennouf pries the waveform open and combs it into deadly attack while legs and back cripple. It's a visitation of this sonic fingerprint away from the more common house music forms it’s attributed to. The sonic strength, the violence of the suicide drop and the war cry of the sound allowed to exist in a hyper-dimensional space.

Secondly, “Hanneton", similarly deploys outrageous low-end against an unspooling trap format recalling Misogi’s sky-ward productions but alienating them away, wrapped in rubber. No voices here, just ice and the unsettling falling apart of the machine. Lucy takes on the opening track with the first of the three remixes here. Vertiginous and endlessly falling into itself, it has the effect of reverse Shepard tones as the comb-filtering on the bass line is coiled together vortex like. A definitively techno, heads down stomper.

Mondkopf dials up the madness again as the B-side opens with his Remix of Ferro… rebuilding the track with tabletop pedal feedback loops chopping into the OG and phasing them into vomitous gobs. Noise rushes through and filters go ballistic as more and more horror is draped over the bones. Katsunori Sawa’s take reflects his other work for Leyla, utilising highly spacial sound design and industrial hacking to achieve a irritated and uneasy half-step techno which flails away in the cavern. All three remixes stay strong to the original with their remixers distinct tastes elevating them to new places.

After the nightmare settles, Chennouf once more steps in to close with the cyber-pastoral birdsong of “The Observer Effect”, sonic elements of the previous rush still present but allowed to sway down and rest. Really exciting music here from all players and the start of a new relationship between Opal and the music and ideas of C. Chennouf.